33 ms·

Facebook to shift permanently toward more remote work after coronavirus

596 points by Bahamut 6y ago

troydavis 6y ago
Open access article: https://www.theverge.com/facebook/2020/5/21/21265699/facebook-remote-work-shift-workforce-permanent-covid-19-mark-zuckerberg-interview https://www.theverge.com/facebook/2020/5/21/21265699/faceboo... > In a move that illustrates how swiftly the COVID-19 pandemic is reshaping the global economy, Facebook said today that it would begin allowing most of its employees to request a permanent change in their jobs to let them work remotely. The company will begin today by making most of its US job openings eligible for remote hires and begin taking applications for permanent remote work among its workforce later this year. > “We’re going to be the most forward-leaning company on remote work at our scale,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an interview with The Verge. “We need to do this in a way that’s thoughtful and responsible, so we’re going to do this in a measured way. But I think that it’s possible that over the next five to 10 years — maybe closer to 10 than five, but somewhere in that range — I think we could get to about half of the company working remotely permanently.”
mv4 6y ago
many things will change. Traffic, real estate prices, salaries.
LordFast 6y ago
Managed mixed teams before. Best of luck to FB management on getting things right. I would prefer either one without mixing. One shoe in one shoe out is a great way to make it extra hard to manage.
- ppoint 6y ago
  Facebook has been managing distributed teams for a long time. Nothing new for them.
- eloff 6y ago
  As a remote worker I've seen it done well and I've seen it done poorly. I think you have to go remote first, with all meetings and communicating being inclusive for the whole team. If you decide something face to face, send a summary via slack or email. Anyway details aside, it can be done, it's just it has to be a deliberate effort from everyone in the office.
  - jonpurdy 6y ago
    Totally correct. The default modes of communication should be asynchronous, or if a real-time meeting is required then everyone should be on video in separate places, even if most are in the office. This prevents situations where the remote workers are at a disadvantage because of a bad audio or video setup. If the audio sucks for everyone, they'll find a way to fix it (plus it's way easier to capture individual audio than a room full of people). The benefits are also there for people who go to the office since there ends up being less tribal knowledge and more written down or documented somewhere.
- MisterBastahrd 6y ago
  My employer is going to 2 days a week in-office for the technical staff because WFH has gone so well. Allows us to work and do some planning remotely and to get together to plan large projects so we can whiteboard effectively.
sbuccini 6y ago
"Facebook will reduce the pay of workers who move to less expensive areas." Personally, this is a deal breaker for me. I don't want to get paid less for doing the same amount of work. In a remote world, deciding where to live should be a personal decision of how one spends their income. Facebook doesn't pay employees less because they decided to drive an expensive car to work. Facebook, along with all other tech companies, make crazy amounts of revenue per employee. The pay reductions will be a rounding error on the company's budget. Why not keep salaries the same and get the absolute best talent in every market across the world?
- HorizonXP 6y ago
  I agree with this in some ways, but I could see how it could heavily skew local job markets against companies that can't match the FAANG salaries. Now, that's assuming that FB can hire enough people to shift local salaries like that.
  - oarabbus_ 6y ago
    Spread across the entire country/world? Unrealistic to think FB alone moves the needle. Maybe if all of FANG+ followed Facebook's lead, you'd see this effect.
- zerr 6y ago
  Companies (e.g. Mozilla, Gitlab, now Facebook) often forget another side of the coin - "less expensive areas" most of the time means worse quality of life. Also, all of those companies say "less expensive areas" while they really mean "lower wage areas" - which doesn't necessary align with the former preposition.
  - cameronbrown 6y ago
    Cities are horrible places to live. Literally the only thing keeping me in them are jobs.
    - dbish 6y ago
sbuccini 6y ago
"Facebook will reduce the pay of workers who move to less expensive areas." Personally, this is a deal breaker for me. I don't want to get paid less for doing the same amount of work. In a remote world, deciding where to live should be a personal decision of how one spends their income. Facebook doesn't pay employees less because they decided to drive an expensive car to work. Facebook, along with all other tech companies, make crazy amounts of revenue per employee. The pay reductions will be a rounding error on the company's budget. Why not keep salaries the same and get the absolute best talent in every market across the world?
- FanaHOVA 6y ago
  > Why not keep salaries the same and get the absolute best talent in every market across the world? Because people living in those other markets will be more than happy to take a "reduced pay" for SF standards, since that's way higher than any other local wage.
- lokar 6y ago
  All (most?) big companies already set pay based on local market conditions. This is actually based on what pay levels are in the market, not cost of living.
  - three_seagrass 6y ago
    The local market rates are correlated with, if not caused by, the cost of living in that market.
    - lokar 6y ago
      Most of the time, but with exceptions. For example, for engineers in many big tech companies, pay vs COL in London is not very attractive.
      - three_seagrass 6y ago
        And Moscow. Of course there are outliers but the trend, especially in the U.S., remains.
ulfw 6y ago
"Facebook will reduce the pay of workers who move to less expensive areas." That is ridiculous. A job is a job. Also what prevents anyone from keeping a California phone number and a PO Box in Menlo Park or wherever? At what point have you 'moved'? Note: I don't advocate doing this. I neither work in CA nor at Facebook. I just wonder if this doesn't open things up for being to game the system.
- mylons 6y ago
  great way to game the system. probably even worth it to pay someone a few hundred a month to let you send mail to their house.
- cobookman 6y ago
  US Tax code. For example: https://www.palmspringstaxandtrustlawyers.com/nonresidents-working-remotely-for-california-businesses/ https://www.palmspringstaxandtrustlawyers.com/nonresidents-w...
  - jefftk 6y ago
    You could still live in a much cheaper area of the same state. In the case of CA, drive 4hr out of SF and you can find houses for $100k that would be $1M in the city, with much more land. (Not something I would prefer, but many would.)
    - econcon 6y ago
      what's the area of that 100k house?
      - GhettoChild 6y ago
        Salton City, CA
      - jefftk 6y ago
        Example: https://www.redfin.com/CA/Ione/1400-W-Marlette-St-95640/unit-46/home/45617857 https://www.redfin.com/CA/Ione/1400-W-Marlette-St-95640/unit... in Ione CA. 3br, 1400sqft, under $100k, under 4hr from SF.
joelbluminator 6y ago
Is this the start of the end of Silicon Valley (and other major tech hubs?) I know I'm being dramatic, but they can hire smart developers anywhere in the world. You could say what works for them won't work for a young startup but I'm not so sure honestly
- iphone_elegance 6y ago
  We're exploring outsourcing again
  - joelbluminator 6y ago
    Not sure what you mean, this isn't outsourcing. This is remote first...two different things. In outsourcing the development is done by an entity which doesn't belong to you, that's a different thing.
    - three_seagrass 6y ago
      I believe what they meant to say was offshoring, not outsourcing.
  - cobookman 6y ago
    Timezones matter. There's large benefits in having an entire team in the same timezone. If you've ever tried scheduling a call between India, East Coast US, Europe, and West Coast US...you've dealt with the fact that there's only a few hours a day such a call can occur, greatly limiting the ability to schedule last minute meetings.
    - joelbluminator 6y ago
      All big corps have development teams all over the world though no? I agree it's an issue. But the talent pool remote work opens to you is huge.
      - tanilama 6y ago
izzydata 6y ago
What if I live in San Fran, but just live in my car? That should save a lot of money.
- gregkerzhner 6y ago
  I know a lot of people that do this (in their vans). Its not actually as crazy as it sounds - the van is comfortable and you can shower in a gym.
  - hackissimo123 6y ago
    I know a couple of people who live out of their vans. I believe them when they say it's not actually that bad and they like it. But at the end of the day, while I doubt they'd admit it, the main reason either of them do it is because they can't afford anything else, even though they have full-time jobs and work just as hard as the next guy. Isn't this a sign of a broken housing market? What kind of world are we creating where significant numbers of people are forced out of economic necessity to live in vehicles?
spacephysics 6y ago
Similar to other people on Twitter and Shopify’s announcement thread, I think this might be an excuse for corporations to reduce their commercial footprint and save money by opening applicant pools to larger areas of the country with cheaper CoL (and perhaps the world, different time zones are tough though). What about work visas? Will this encourage more visas, or will citizens become unsettled after more cost effective labor is remotely hired while they’re left competing against far cheaper world economies. I can see arguments for both expanding H1B program, and making it more difficult/selective. Something about this doesn’t feel right, the pandemic isn’t nearly as bad as was predicted. It’s been devastating, but nothing like 1918. That is to say, perhaps these drastic actions of mass WFH will have implications we can’t predict yet, especially at scale. Will cities become less congested? How about home life, if WFH becomes standard in 5 years time, and some positions that are easily remote are hard to find physically, will home life become disrupted? (Currently domestic violence, child abuse has soared, though this is most likely due to the stress of the pandemic, and not the WFH itself. Through school, work, etc tends to allow those at risk to form social networks, and reach out for help from their abusers.) There is something to say about spending time away from immediate family. Some people need the break, others are synergetic and can spend all their time together. Depends on the persons involved. But let’s not celebrate just yet, there’s obvious economic incentives, and it isn’t clear this can be reliably reversed. We’re rarely given the full list of motives, which may not be in our best interest.
- jonny_eh 6y ago
  > nothing like 1918 It's not over.
  - djsumdog 6y ago
    It's still nowhere near those numbers though and I doubt it will be. Some of the cleaned up code from The Imperial College has been released and it's just tragic that just wide sweeping decisions were based on a model that is objectively a nightmare of illogical statements, random ideas, and something that honestly looks more at home in SimCity than in something used to decide policy. I doubt we'll get anywhere near the numbers most models claimed with mitigation. Even the 90k/US currently will have to be re-evaluated at the end and pruned (or possibly added to) for any inaccuracies. Predicting the future is often foolish, and I hope this is a cautionary tale. We'll have to wait until March 2021 to look at the average deaths per year and compare it to 2020 to get a real sense of the picture, but from what I've been reading currently, my hypothesis is that it will be no where near what was predicted a few months ago. (I could be wrong though, but we won't know until 2021). It's all guessing at this point though. This whole thing we're in, was a guess, and the costs are high.
propman 6y ago
Competing with the entire world instead of just your city now.
throwawaysea 6y ago
I don't think Facebook should adjust pay of workers who move to less remote areas based on the area. Why compensate differently for the same value creation? If they do go this route, I hope they make it so that remote works still come out ahead (on net savings) of the big office sites. The cynic in me views this as a purposeful policy choice to PREVENT most people from taking on the new remote work allowance. In other words, this may just be a free PR splash to show they're onboard with the trend. > Among the advantages of a dispersed workforce, Mr. Zuckerberg said, is that it will enable more demographic and ideological diversity if recruits aren’t required to work in tech strongholds like the San Francisco Bay Area. This is of critical importance in tech, especially with companies that control the digital public square such as Facebook or Twitter. Allowing employees to live in different political climates, near family, in different lifestyles (more rural), etc. is badly needed. Otherwise, the world's digital public squares fall victim to the ideological monocultures of San Francisco and Seattle.
- vecter 6y ago
  This is basic supply and demand. Compensation isn't based on "worth" or "value", it's based on market competition. This is the way that your compensation is currently decided, and it's the way that most goods and services in all of existence are priced. People want to have their cake and eat it to, but that's not how the world works.
- arduinomancer 6y ago
  Companies already pay different based on location for the same job today.
- audleman 6y ago
  Let's just say they keep pay the same. All the employees who stay will look at those who moved to Pennsylvania and bought a 2br 2bath 2,000 square foot condo for $300k and say "hey, that costs $1.5 million in SF. Why am I not being compensated for the higher cost of living?"
  - sunaurus 6y ago
    "Hey, <cheaper alternative that co-worker has> costs less than <expensive alternative that I want>, why am I not being compensated more?" (I think it's a weak argument)
dmode 6y ago
Here's an interesting quote from the verge version of the article "We ran these surveys and asked people what they want to do. Twenty percent of our existing employees said that they were extremely or very interested in working remotely full time. And another 20 percent on top of that said that they were somewhat interested" Another way to read this, is that 80% employees are not interested in remote. Companies doing this at large will probably realize that remote work is not popular as it made out to be. https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/21/21265780/facebook-remote-work-mark-zuckerberg-interview-wfh https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/21/21265780/facebook-remote-...
- sharkmerry 6y ago
  > Companies doing this at large will probably realize that remote work is not popular as it made out to be. But will they care once the cost savings are realized? Similar things happened with open office floorplans.
- bubblicious 6y ago
  remote work in the current COVID conditions with outside restrictions, home school, 24/7 juggling between work and babysitting for parents is not the same as your usual remote work conditions. I think the numbers drawn from this COVID WFH are far from the reality.
  - eleventyandone 6y ago
    +1 and beyond those specific examples I don't think people have had a chance to fully setup a successful work from home "environment" which might include: dedicated room/office, better connectivity (internet/webcam/headphones), and proper routines/habits. I imagine most people have moved past the "throw a desk in an unused area of the house and work mainly off a laptop" phase of WFH and in to the "have additional monitors, a quality chair, and access to basic office supplies" phase... there's definitely more phases that need to happen and to use the current/limited/reaction based setups as an example of what full-time WFH is is shortsighted, IMHO. Also, there's a company/team culture shift that needs to happen too, which to the parent's point, is hard to just magically do while also balancing all these additional "challenges".
ironman1478 6y ago
I might be in a minority here, but I really don't feel like full time WFH is more productive. It could be indicative of my work place's culture only, but I feel like there are many more meetings now & communication is much harder. Also, it's nice seeing everybody at work, getting lunch, having a coffee break with people, whiteboarding, etc. There is a huge social aspect that is lost with WFH that zoom can't replace. Imo that reduction in socializing has reduced my work performance because I've noticed I just sprint ahead for 4+ hours straight and burn out really hard at the end of the day.
- whateveracct 6y ago
  As an employee, it doesn't matter if it's more productive. You greatly increase your pay per hour of work given that you don't have to commute and you definitely don't spend 8 hrs of work consumed by work like you are forced to when in an office. Productivity as an employee is about meeting a bar (that you partially define along with your employer). Caring about maximizing productivity is the goal of your employer. But you have some leverage in this job market so it's not like they can squeeze you dry. Remote only helps the employee side of that adversarial relationship.
  - bobmalone123 6y ago
    Why do you see the employer/employee relationship as adversarial? Perhaps you are working in the wrong company. You need employers as much as they need employees. It’s a myopic view.
    - klodolph 6y ago
      I think you may be reading something into the term “adversarial” that isn’t there. A relationship can be both adversarial and cooperative at the same time, that is just the nature of human behavior. My personal take on things is that if you don’t recognize the adversarial part of the employer/employee relationship, then you will suffer for it. It’s more healthy to recognize where parties have competing interests, and it’s unhealthy to ignore them. I’d also say that the people who can ignore the adversarial aspects of employment can only do so because of a fair bit of privilege. For example, people will throw around the saying here that “HR is an advocate for the company, not the employee,” but many of us will never really have to deal with HR in a way where it really matters.
mfDjB 6y ago
With all this remote work going on, does anyone know whether this will affect whether companies are willing to relocate people to the USA? Would be a real shame if that was to go.
neonate 6y ago
https://archive.md/XBbjV https://archive.md/XBbjV https://www.theverge.com/facebook/2020/5/21/21265699/facebook-remote-work-shift-workforce-permanent-covid-19-mark-zuckerberg-interview https://www.theverge.com/facebook/2020/5/21/21265699/faceboo...
- TheBlerch 6y ago
  Thanks for posting the article link. Archive.md, which is a fantastic service, started throwing a 403 Forbidden error and 1001 error from Cloudflare a few days ago. Any idea what’s causing it? Cleared cookies and cache for it already. However I’m able to get to your archived article.
  - kablow 6y ago
    Cloudflare dns doesn’t support it, if they’re your dns provider. Some browsers are using them for dns over https which may be the culprit.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - odensc 6y ago
      More specifically they don't support CloudFlare's DNS. The operator of Archive.(today/is/md) has decided to specifically provide bad IPs when the EDNS client subnet extension isn't provided, which CloudFlare's DNS doesn't provide due to privacy concerns. A lot more discussion on this topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828317
  - m463 6y ago
    They have some really creepy dns hacks when you access your webpage. you will access <personally>.<identifiable>.<stuff>.pixel.archive.md (also mail.ru)
zaptheimpaler 6y ago
In this thread: SF engineers realize how well paid they are. Did not complain about 2x salary bump when moving to SF. Will complain about 0.5x when moving out of SF. Signs of realization that pay is only weakly correlated with skill yet to be seen.
- buboard 6y ago
  Stage of grief: 1 to 2
  - zaptheimpaler 6y ago
    Existential crisis in 5... 4...
- pascalxus 6y ago
  If you have a family with kids in daycare at 3000$+ each! and paying 6000$ a month for a crappy 2bd apartment, you'll happily move to the midwest for half the salary. You'd be better off, in terms of standard of living in a midwest town/city at half the SF salary. Now if you're a single person in SF, that's a different story.
  - hesdeadjim 6y ago
    Colorado is the sweet spot if you don't require access to lakes or the ocean. I'm about ~$1850 for daycare and a nice house in Boulder is around $1mil. For a FAANG level engineer out here that's not much of a stretch at all.
    - packetlost 6y ago
      Boulder or Seattle are the two places I'd like to move to the most. Sadly I'm stuck in WI for now.
    - pascalxus 6y ago
      1850$ for day care is still somewhat high. In TX, you can find daycare for 600$ or so.
conqrr 6y ago
This mostly doesn't change much. Most people who come to high pay areas come for the pay and opportunity and will continue to do so. Sounds more like PR. It's yet to be seen if productivity is better or worse.
- Diederich 6y ago
  > It's yet to be seen if productivity is better or worse The rest of the source announcement covered that. It was noted that individual productivity was the same or better, but there were concerns about collaboration.
Diederich 6y ago
As an aside: the announcement started at 10:00 Pacific and Mark continued to speak for an hour. This story (and many others!) were created and posted well before any of the details were mentioned. I'm not saying that's bad, but it was strange getting e-mails from people with links to fully formed news articles even while I was watching the announcement live.
- packetslave 6y ago
  It's very common for large companies to give stories to journalists early with an embargo date/time. #notspeakingforfacebook
caogecym 6y ago
This would increase the talent pool for tech companies that goes remote. e.g. U.S. companies could hire more international developers without sponsoring work visa for them.
golergka 6y ago
Cool. Cool cool cool. I don't live in US and don't want to immigrate at the moment for a variety of personal reasons. But I am competent and professional, and would be happy to deliver just as much as a SF-based engineer for half the pay. (When I said cool, I meant, it's really cool for me. It might not be as cool for a US-based HN reader).
- higeorge13 6y ago
  Exactly! Most HN readers don't realize the real amount of talent outside of US waiting for this opportunity. There are thousands of people who would easily work at any top-notch companies but were just not willing to leave their home towns, their families, friends, local lifestyle etc. And now they can easily work to such companies with /2 or /3 of the standard SF wage.
realbarack 6y ago
I've added the news on Facebook's permanent WFH policy in this spreadsheet where I've been tracking WFH announcements: https://airtable.com/shrC1mvKjwntaqocO/tbl73UY1jDmReLge7 https://airtable.com/shrC1mvKjwntaqocO/tbl73UY1jDmReLge7
- mFixman 6y ago
  This is really useful. Thanks for accumulating this data!
  - realbarack 6y ago
    No problem! I'm glad you found it useful.
derivativethrow 6y ago
These are the requirements for an existing employee to move to full-time remote, according to the all-hands today: 1. Level IC5 or higher (this is what most would call "senior"). 2. Can't have performance less than meets expectations in last two reviews. 3. Permission from team and manager.
- cma 6y ago
  Sounds like Scientology's requirements for making trips out of the compound.
aelleth 6y ago
Zuckerberg live Q&A: https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10111936118050541 https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10111936118050541
ozzyoli 6y ago
As a Brit; I'm a capitalist with a sprinkle of socialism. I'm disappointing none of these tech companies are acknowledging the happiness that comes from camaraderie and togetherness. (Note: I don't have a family though) I love the company of others; and the unpredictability of what my day has in store when I venture out my front door. Everybody working from home for me sounds like one step closer towards a blander, lonelier, disengaged, dispassionate, oppressed workforce.
- maigret 6y ago
  You can still find places to work with other peoples, or spontaneously meet your colleagues in a much nicer (and possibly nearer) place. When the COVID crisis will go, you'll find tons of options to meet people thorough the day and enjoy a great social life. Working from home is a pandemic thing, afterwards you could work from anywhere you want.
- ativzzz 6y ago
  > I'm disappointing none of these tech companies are acknowledging the happiness that comes from camaraderie and togetherness Exactly, which is why I work so I can experience camaraderie and togetherness with the people I actually want to: my family and my friends. Working from home allows me to do that more, much more than working in an office.
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
Hmm...I wonder if I'll be hearing from them again. I've been recruited a few times by FB, but the relationship ended when I told them that I won't be commuting into the city to work in that massive bullpen. Unlike a lot of folks, I don't have much against them. The people I've interacted with have been a decent, diverse, crew, and I use the platform fairly lightly. The chances are better than even that I wouldn't be considered a "cultural fit" with the company (I'm a bit "long in the tooth," and I've found that's a "showstopper," these days). Also, I specialize in writing native Apple software in Swift. I don't think that's a stack they are really interested in. Still not sure if I would take any jobs there, but it hasn't gotten past the initial phase anyway, so it has not been a decision that I've had to struggle with.
- packetslave 6y ago
  > The chances are better than even that I wouldn't be considered a "cultural fit" with the company (I'm a bit "long in the tooth," and I've found that's a "showstopper," these days). Anecdata: I'm 40+ and as far as I can tell, I fit in just fine. > Also, I specialize in writing native Apple software in Swift. I don't think that's a stack they are really interested in. A recent earnings release said that 90+% of FB ad revenue is from mobile. Between Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsAp, IOS is definitely a company priority (although I don't think we've publicly released stats on Android vs. IOS). I don't actually know if/how-much Swift we're doing vs. ObjC (I'm on the server side of things, not the client)
  - ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
    The people I talked to described a massive ObjC monorepo (Instagram). Not sure about the FB app, but you guys did invent React, so I suspect that platform-dedicated solutions are not high on the guest list.
sb52191 6y ago
I've read a few of these work from home related articles here on HN and I have to say, I'm super surprised by how many people are both vehemently against the idea of remote and generally pessimistic for what it would mean for society. Maybe I'm in the minority here, but my main hobby outside of work is outdoors related. I consistently spend my Friday nights driving 3+ hours to the mountains. The idea of being able to up and move to a mountain town, save the hours I'd be commuting to work AND commuting to the mountains, is so exciting to me. And that's on top of just the happiness I'd get being able to look out my window and see (what I consider) nature vs the cookie cutter buildings of suburbia Silicon Valley. Where are the cyclists, the surfers, the skiiers/snowboarders, dirt bikers, rock climbers, etc etc in these threads? I really can't believe there are that few of us... But on top of just hobbies, I'd be so excited to see what society could look like in a much more remote world. I think a lot of people would spread out and leave Silicon Valley (but not everyone obviously). I think you'd see more small/medium sized towns pop up across the US that would develop their own uniqueness and character. Traffic deaths would likely go down because people would drive less. Maybe general physical fitness/health would go up because people aren't sitting in their cars and have time to exercise? People working minimum wage jobs would likely have better access to housing as demand spreads and isn't as concentrated. We could see a maaassssive change in the lives of the population, and I'm optimistic it would be for the better. Note: I'm not saying everyone should be fully remote, or that working remote works for everyone, but the general lack of any real optimism about what life COULD be like in these threads is surprising to me.
- 121789 6y ago
  I think people are rightfully wary about massive employment changes that could have significant negative consequences. I see a slow shift from treating ICs like people with differentiated skillsets to undifferentiated drones. I think that rarely works out for the employee.
  - sb52191 6y ago
    "I see a slow shift from treating ICs like people with differentiated skillsets to undifferentiated drones. I think that rarely works out for the employee." I see it as the opposite. If an employer goes from mandating everyone be in office all the time, to allowing ICs to have a choice, doesn't that treat them less like an undifferentiated drone and acknowledge that some people work better WFH and others don't, or that for some projects you might want to be away from the office for extended periods of time?
SNosTrAnDbLe 6y ago
For me, my commute reduced from 1 hour each way to zero and that 2 hours of my life that I get back had a huge impact on my productivity. I am an engineer and I feel that I collaborate and prioritize using asynchronous messaging so much better. Even though I was really working only 40 hours, it felt like I was working for 60 or even more when I was working from office
knorker 6y ago
Thank you Facebook for being a leader and forcing competitors to at least consider the same, and other companies to cargo cult it. More jokingly: I guess Facebook employees didn't get the hint when they got the biggest open office plan in the world. Zuck must have been very confused when they made the worst office in the world yet people still showed up. Now he's pretty much telling them to stay away. I assumed he's tired of interacting with "people" all the time, while building a social network.
focus2020 6y ago
Companies are realising the amount they save with infrastructure Costs. Even indian service companies TCS is going 75 percent workers fully remote.
nostromo 6y ago
Our cities are going to be so sad after all of these changes. Knowledge workers are all going to be in the suburbs or working from home. Restaurants and bars will be shuttered en masse. Parks and shopping plazas will be empty. Trains and busses will be ignored in favor of cars. This really does look like it could be the end of new urbanism and the revenge of the suburbs.
- mcfunk 6y ago
  Seems a bit extreme. Plenty of people (younger people especially) prefer living in a city regardless of where they work.
- nameless912 6y ago
  Counterpoint: as a late 20something software engineer, I'm taking the opportunity to work remotely as motivation to move to a (cheaper) city and live right in the heart of downtown. Now that I can choose where I work, I can move to a city I love that's a bit cheaper than my current location, own a house in an awesome neighborhood, and hopefully take much more advantage of what the city has to offer. As of now, I've done very little exploring in my current (very large) city because 1) I live on the outskirts to be able to afford my rent, 2) I had to drive almost an hour each way to get to work, and 3) I was so "busy" due to my commute that I was exhausted in the evenings and busy with keeping the house in order on the weekends. Frankly, working remotely is giving me the opportunity to actually participate in the city culture I wanted so badly, but on a scale that's much easier to digest and enjoy.
veselin 6y ago
One should keep in mind that all the "forever" claims by corporations are forever only until some VP quits. The moment the productivity of remote employees goes measurably worse than the one of local employees, there will be immediate reason to reverse these plans. Yes, some companies are 100% remote and they do well, but I think it is because they hire from another less competitive (for compensation) pool. I.e. they pay low end silicon valley salaries in cheap markets and manage to get very high-end talent.
urmish 6y ago
Imagine all the cultural export that used to happen earlier from California. All that will ideally either stop or tech companies will somehow find a way to make it worse and bring cancel culture to remote workplaces.
oxfordmale 6y ago
Working from home doesn't work with Facebook's appraisal system, where you need to s* up to your peers and managers all the time to get anywhere in your career. Most Facebook employees will eventually be back in the office, as it is difficult to build up such relations when remote working only.
polygot 6y ago
There's a lot of people who are treating remote work as binary; it has to be 100% remote or 100% onsite. I think that some will benefit from it (those whose commutes are long for example), and some may have children at home and thus can't work as productively. Could it be possible to work from home most of the days, but not all of them?
alexchantavy 6y ago
As a city guy, I'm somewhat concerned about how this pattern of remote work may permanently change life in the cities. I enjoy living in a densely populated area and being around people walking to and from work and having spontaneous interactions. If knowledge work becomes largely remote then I think cities could lose a lot of this vibrancy as people may not have a lot of reason to cluster in this way in the future. Side note, Richard Florida's "Rise of the Creative Class" talks about a lot of the effects and benefits of people clustering in cities (but in my opinion he only does a so-so job talking about the causes), and I'd be curious to see what other urban planners think about changes like this.
- chillacy 6y ago
  On the bright side though, cities might become more diverse (instead of being tech bubbles where only programmers can afford rent). It may also undo some of the brain drain happening to cities in the middle of the country, which could revitalize / modernize them.
trhway 6y ago
This is basically another way of outsourcing. Looks good on paper as always. Whether it will really be cost effective - YMMV as many companies found in the past. While the salaries of rank and file ICs will go down, the salary of organizationally key people able to manage the outsourced work - PM/architect/manager - would go up. They would be flown in regularly for important meetings, paid high cost temporary housing while in the town, etc. We had that supposedly key architect on the team who was coming for 2 months every 2 months from abroad and the company was paying for the flying and everything while he was here.
fourmyle 6y ago
I find people who have never actually worked remotely before are all jazzed going full time remote. People who have done it before, like myself, will tell them it's not for everyone and has some downsides. Once people realize they can't just go snowboarding in the middle of the day and need to actively find human interaction to avoid depression and isolation while getting paid less they will change their tune. The ideal setup is 1-2 days per week WFH and flexible WFH while traveling for the holidays so you don't have burn through vacation days IMO.
allsystemsgo 6y ago
Amazing how many people are so against remote work here. Hey, here’s a thought. Let people choose how and where they work best. /thread.
dang 6y ago
Related ongoing thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23264521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23264521
rcpt 6y ago
I don't really like working from home but I hate the Bay Area. Same price as NYC but it's a boring sprawling suburb no different from Florida or Texas. Sure the mountains and weather are nice but I'm not paying rent to the trees.
rargulati 6y ago
I do feel like HN is having a rehash of a conversation we've had many times this past month. I'll post my favorite comment [1] on the matter of remote salary adjustment, which captures a key market effect we all seem to forget (Bay Area specific): ----------------------------------------------------- "Cost of Living" adjustments are a red herring, what they really are is really "competition density". There are plenty of tech companies paying great salaries in the bay because they have to, otherwise they would just go work for someone else. On the other hand, if you lived in Oklahoma you aren't going to say no to $LOCAL_OFFER+10k just because bay area salaries are $LOCAL_OFFER+90k. As long as this disparity exists, I forsee bay area salaries and CoL still being high. Until companies move headquarters out of the bay, the trend will continue. ----------------------------------------------------- Similarly, in this thread, Consultant32452 states [2] that the real argument is between those who can demand a high salary regardless of geography, and those who can only demand a high salary _because_ of geography. The mistake is many people in the latter group think they are in the former. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23162855 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23162855 by hn user nemothekid [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23265158 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23265158 by hn user Consultant32452
- rokhayakebe 6y ago
  KEY, The mistake is many people in the latter group think they are in the former.
  - anon102010 6y ago
    What's a bit interesting is that as a consultant with an OK rate I always attributed it to being onsite, directly talking with top management (what I do is routine so pay is basically for being able to interact successfully up and down org chart). This meant I felt very GEOGRAPHICALLY tied down. Now I've not shown up onsite to ANYONE in 3+ months (we went remote early before shutdown). And it's not clear to me that value has diminished, though I need to up my zoom game a bit. So some people may be discovering they thought they were geo tied / competitive but may be more broadly valuable or able to serve into that market remotely more easily than they thought?
eezurr 6y ago
Potential downsides include: 1. Increased eye strain from staring at a screen all day. Look up "Computer Vision" 2. "Zoom" fatigue. Less participation in meetings because interruptions need to be repeated to be heard. 3. More hours sitting in the same chair in the same position. 4. No pre/post meeting conversation to catch up/tie up loose ends. (This wont work in a zoom meeting where you cant turn and lower your voice to the person sitting next to you). 5. Now no second place. The US is already losing it's third place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place . Where are you going to make friends and find a romantic partner? 6. Transfer of real estate cost to employees. Especially couples. Now you might need two offices in your house. 7. Machine learning employee monitoring programs. i.e. spyware on your own computers. Is your APM up to par? Cant fake me you scrag. 8. Video monitoring in your own home. Can your boss see (and hear?) you working at your desk? 9. Habit building: used to hit the gym before heading home? Now it's less convenient to get there. 10. You now have to feed yourself, at your own expense. You get to clean the mess too. 11. Live in a the city in a tiny bedroom or studio apartment? Do you have roommates? Have fun working in that environment all day. 12. Attention seeking children/pets at home while you're trying to work 13. No more office perks. 14. Have an annoying neighbor who wont turn the music down? Live next to a hospital? I could go on
jonny383 6y ago
Now all of our personal data can be accessed from home. Lovely.
rajacombinator 6y ago
My productivity and quality of life are both much higher WFH. And I’m even more willing to work longer hours, for any gulag drivers who happen to be reading.
geodel 6y ago
A large number of comments here looks like every employee at Facebook is exceptionally skilled and critically important. I read somewhere only square root of total employee strength are doing critical work in the company. Now I do not have any proof of this but I am working at company which would have may be 5K work force in IT organization. Here I am regularly surprised that hardly 10-15 names out of 100s pop up every time on any important issue for projects which I have some relation with. Doing same analysis with facebook would mean there would be 250 or so employees who can seriously negotiate salaries with them for being critical to company. Of course some people would get lucky or unlucky despite being less or more important. But I think this is delusional to think that most of ~50K strong workforce in FB will be able to get their compensation demands like bay area salary in middle america accepted by company.
saiya-jin 6y ago
Brainstorming over a coffee/lunch/whatever, pair programming/debugging (especially debugging!), and generally meetings in person can't be replaced effectively by any video call. It just doesn't work, and never did. Maybe with proper VR one day it will, but I will be retired by then. Folks here who benefit from commute cut will keep celebrating WFH like new age of something, but for many companies, especially multinational corps, that's desperate temporary measure and it sucks for most folks in one way or another. Managers don't want it, many employees don't want it. Don't keep your hopes up just because few companies change their policies a bit to look more attractive for new hires. Also as other state, expect some salary re-adjustments based on that.
dzonga 6y ago
great move, from fb. given they've a global product. it democratizes opportunity. plenty of people suffer from the misfortune of having been born in the wrong country. I see the trend continuing. one thing, I see is immigrant friendly countries gonna benefit from this more e.g Canada, Chile. And places with high quality of life, low cost of living.
imheretolearn 6y ago
In my opinion, WFH vs on-site is analogous to reading a physical book vs an e-book. Some people will prefer one over the other. Considering the above analogy holds, most companies will allow both, remote work and on-site.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
xtat 6y ago
kicking and screaming
xtat 6y ago
Also, zucc publicly stated intentions to adjust salary for anyone that moves out of the bay area. You can tell already it's gonna suck to work remotely at facebook.
alanlamm 6y ago
I am surprised that of the pages and pages of comments that I have read (about 500+ comments), few discuss the potential implications of (a) having virtually all of a business's communication (not just the emails and such, but now also the meetings) potentially tracked and monitored, and (b) whether a remote workforce would be even less well equipped to identify/call-out improper corporate behaviour. Would the Google employees that called-out some of the surveillance projects, or the Uber employees that called out harassment exist remotely? And if they did, isn't it just so much easier to get rid of them? "Susan will not be joining the call today. She no longer works here". A scenario in which HQ gets to know everything while every individual is forced into need-to-know seems dystopian to me.
- wyattpeak 6y ago
  I don't know how much I think it would have an effect. Google employees didn't know about the surveillance projects because they found out on-site, they knew about them because Google chose to make them known. Plenty of companies keep secrets from their employees, and those secrets largely remain safe despite employees working on premises. And outside of Google, who had until recently a very open culture of critiquing decisions, almost all calling-out happened through non-company channels. And is it really so much easier to get rid of them? Presumably they'll have the same legal protections they previously did, and having to be physically removed from the building isn't exactly a major limitation on firing.
- buboard 6y ago
  unless you are being surveilled with a camera or sth, you can use anything to communicate (which you normally can't do in an office). And having more work opportunities readily available makes it easier to call-out and quit , no? You also don't need to conform to a physically concentrated groupthink. In many ways, remote work is better in all those terms
bg24 6y ago
Winner: Human talent, no matter where they live. Loser: Real Estate.
torgian 6y ago
I can’t help but feel like there is going to be a glut of privacy invasive technologies coming down the pipeline real soon for managers to keep their jobs.
gabagoo 6y ago
Ironic that a company so eager to do this still does not have any legitimate customer support staff.
diogenescynic 6y ago
Where will all these Bay Area people move to if they leave? Sacramento, Tahoe, Los Angeles, Denver?
sjg007 6y ago
They are saying the first wave of WFH will be in cities were they have offices already. In many of those cities Google and Amazon also have offices. Austin is probably going to become very competitive on salaries as well. And as many have seen, home prices and COL have risen in these cities accordingly. So if you do want to work from home for one of the big tech companies be sure to live in a metro that has at least another big tech company in it. This will be a boost for "tier 2" metros with tech companies that support this pattern. Salaries will be going up in those metros. Also if you can WFH for FB, you should be able to WFH for all the other major tech companies which will compete for you using salary and stock etc...

596 points by Bahamut 6y ago

Open access article: https://www.theverge.com/facebook/2020/5/21/21265699/facebook-remote-work-shift-workforce-permanent-covid-19-mark-zuckerberg-interview https://www.theverge.com/facebook/2020/5/21/21265699/faceboo... > In a move that illustrates how swiftly the COVID-19 pandemic is reshaping the global economy, Facebook said today that it would begin allowing most of its employees to request a permanent change in their jobs to let them work remotely. The company will begin today by making most of its US job openings eligible for remote hires and begin taking applications for permanent remote work among its workforce later this year. > “We’re going to be the most forward-leaning company on remote work at our scale,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an interview with The Verge. “We need to do this in a way that’s thoughtful and responsible, so we’re going to do this in a measured way. But I think that it’s possible that over the next five to 10 years — maybe closer to 10 than five, but somewhere in that range — I think we could get to about half of the company working remotely permanently.”

mv4 6y ago

many things will change. Traffic, real estate prices, salaries.

LordFast 6y ago

Managed mixed teams before. Best of luck to FB management on getting things right. I would prefer either one without mixing. One shoe in one shoe out is a great way to make it extra hard to manage.

ppoint 6y ago
Facebook has been managing distributed teams for a long time. Nothing new for them.
eloff 6y ago
As a remote worker I've seen it done well and I've seen it done poorly. I think you have to go remote first, with all meetings and communicating being inclusive for the whole team. If you decide something face to face, send a summary via slack or email. Anyway details aside, it can be done, it's just it has to be a deliberate effort from everyone in the office.
- jonpurdy 6y ago
  Totally correct. The default modes of communication should be asynchronous, or if a real-time meeting is required then everyone should be on video in separate places, even if most are in the office. This prevents situations where the remote workers are at a disadvantage because of a bad audio or video setup. If the audio sucks for everyone, they'll find a way to fix it (plus it's way easier to capture individual audio than a room full of people). The benefits are also there for people who go to the office since there ends up being less tribal knowledge and more written down or documented somewhere.
MisterBastahrd 6y ago
My employer is going to 2 days a week in-office for the technical staff because WFH has gone so well. Allows us to work and do some planning remotely and to get together to plan large projects so we can whiteboard effectively.

sbuccini 6y ago

"Facebook will reduce the pay of workers who move to less expensive areas." Personally, this is a deal breaker for me. I don't want to get paid less for doing the same amount of work. In a remote world, deciding where to live should be a personal decision of how one spends their income. Facebook doesn't pay employees less because they decided to drive an expensive car to work. Facebook, along with all other tech companies, make crazy amounts of revenue per employee. The pay reductions will be a rounding error on the company's budget. Why not keep salaries the same and get the absolute best talent in every market across the world?

HorizonXP 6y ago
I agree with this in some ways, but I could see how it could heavily skew local job markets against companies that can't match the FAANG salaries. Now, that's assuming that FB can hire enough people to shift local salaries like that.
- oarabbus_ 6y ago
  Spread across the entire country/world? Unrealistic to think FB alone moves the needle. Maybe if all of FANG+ followed Facebook's lead, you'd see this effect.
zerr 6y ago
Companies (e.g. Mozilla, Gitlab, now Facebook) often forget another side of the coin - "less expensive areas" most of the time means worse quality of life. Also, all of those companies say "less expensive areas" while they really mean "lower wage areas" - which doesn't necessary align with the former preposition.
- cameronbrown 6y ago
  Cities are horrible places to live. Literally the only thing keeping me in them are jobs.
  - dbish 6y ago

sbuccini 6y ago

FanaHOVA 6y ago
> Why not keep salaries the same and get the absolute best talent in every market across the world? Because people living in those other markets will be more than happy to take a "reduced pay" for SF standards, since that's way higher than any other local wage.
lokar 6y ago
All (most?) big companies already set pay based on local market conditions. This is actually based on what pay levels are in the market, not cost of living.
- three_seagrass 6y ago
  The local market rates are correlated with, if not caused by, the cost of living in that market.
  - lokar 6y ago
    Most of the time, but with exceptions. For example, for engineers in many big tech companies, pay vs COL in London is not very attractive.
    - three_seagrass 6y ago
      And Moscow. Of course there are outliers but the trend, especially in the U.S., remains.

ulfw 6y ago

"Facebook will reduce the pay of workers who move to less expensive areas." That is ridiculous. A job is a job. Also what prevents anyone from keeping a California phone number and a PO Box in Menlo Park or wherever? At what point have you 'moved'? Note: I don't advocate doing this. I neither work in CA nor at Facebook. I just wonder if this doesn't open things up for being to game the system.

mylons 6y ago
great way to game the system. probably even worth it to pay someone a few hundred a month to let you send mail to their house.
cobookman 6y ago
US Tax code. For example: https://www.palmspringstaxandtrustlawyers.com/nonresidents-working-remotely-for-california-businesses/ https://www.palmspringstaxandtrustlawyers.com/nonresidents-w...
- jefftk 6y ago
  You could still live in a much cheaper area of the same state. In the case of CA, drive 4hr out of SF and you can find houses for $100k that would be $1M in the city, with much more land. (Not something I would prefer, but many would.)
  - econcon 6y ago
    what's the area of that 100k house?
    - GhettoChild 6y ago
      Salton City, CA
    - jefftk 6y ago
      Example: https://www.redfin.com/CA/Ione/1400-W-Marlette-St-95640/unit-46/home/45617857 https://www.redfin.com/CA/Ione/1400-W-Marlette-St-95640/unit... in Ione CA. 3br, 1400sqft, under $100k, under 4hr from SF.

joelbluminator 6y ago

Is this the start of the end of Silicon Valley (and other major tech hubs?) I know I'm being dramatic, but they can hire smart developers anywhere in the world. You could say what works for them won't work for a young startup but I'm not so sure honestly

iphone_elegance 6y ago
We're exploring outsourcing again
- joelbluminator 6y ago
  Not sure what you mean, this isn't outsourcing. This is remote first...two different things. In outsourcing the development is done by an entity which doesn't belong to you, that's a different thing.
  - three_seagrass 6y ago
    I believe what they meant to say was offshoring, not outsourcing.
- cobookman 6y ago
  Timezones matter. There's large benefits in having an entire team in the same timezone. If you've ever tried scheduling a call between India, East Coast US, Europe, and West Coast US...you've dealt with the fact that there's only a few hours a day such a call can occur, greatly limiting the ability to schedule last minute meetings.
  - joelbluminator 6y ago
    All big corps have development teams all over the world though no? I agree it's an issue. But the talent pool remote work opens to you is huge.
    - tanilama 6y ago

izzydata 6y ago

What if I live in San Fran, but just live in my car? That should save a lot of money.

gregkerzhner 6y ago
I know a lot of people that do this (in their vans). Its not actually as crazy as it sounds - the van is comfortable and you can shower in a gym.
- hackissimo123 6y ago
  I know a couple of people who live out of their vans. I believe them when they say it's not actually that bad and they like it. But at the end of the day, while I doubt they'd admit it, the main reason either of them do it is because they can't afford anything else, even though they have full-time jobs and work just as hard as the next guy. Isn't this a sign of a broken housing market? What kind of world are we creating where significant numbers of people are forced out of economic necessity to live in vehicles?

spacephysics 6y ago

Similar to other people on Twitter and Shopify’s announcement thread, I think this might be an excuse for corporations to reduce their commercial footprint and save money by opening applicant pools to larger areas of the country with cheaper CoL (and perhaps the world, different time zones are tough though). What about work visas? Will this encourage more visas, or will citizens become unsettled after more cost effective labor is remotely hired while they’re left competing against far cheaper world economies. I can see arguments for both expanding H1B program, and making it more difficult/selective. Something about this doesn’t feel right, the pandemic isn’t nearly as bad as was predicted. It’s been devastating, but nothing like 1918. That is to say, perhaps these drastic actions of mass WFH will have implications we can’t predict yet, especially at scale. Will cities become less congested? How about home life, if WFH becomes standard in 5 years time, and some positions that are easily remote are hard to find physically, will home life become disrupted? (Currently domestic violence, child abuse has soared, though this is most likely due to the stress of the pandemic, and not the WFH itself. Through school, work, etc tends to allow those at risk to form social networks, and reach out for help from their abusers.) There is something to say about spending time away from immediate family. Some people need the break, others are synergetic and can spend all their time together. Depends on the persons involved. But let’s not celebrate just yet, there’s obvious economic incentives, and it isn’t clear this can be reliably reversed. We’re rarely given the full list of motives, which may not be in our best interest.

jonny_eh 6y ago
> nothing like 1918 It's not over.
- djsumdog 6y ago
  It's still nowhere near those numbers though and I doubt it will be. Some of the cleaned up code from The Imperial College has been released and it's just tragic that just wide sweeping decisions were based on a model that is objectively a nightmare of illogical statements, random ideas, and something that honestly looks more at home in SimCity than in something used to decide policy. I doubt we'll get anywhere near the numbers most models claimed with mitigation. Even the 90k/US currently will have to be re-evaluated at the end and pruned (or possibly added to) for any inaccuracies. Predicting the future is often foolish, and I hope this is a cautionary tale. We'll have to wait until March 2021 to look at the average deaths per year and compare it to 2020 to get a real sense of the picture, but from what I've been reading currently, my hypothesis is that it will be no where near what was predicted a few months ago. (I could be wrong though, but we won't know until 2021). It's all guessing at this point though. This whole thing we're in, was a guess, and the costs are high.

propman 6y ago

Competing with the entire world instead of just your city now.

throwawaysea 6y ago

I don't think Facebook should adjust pay of workers who move to less remote areas based on the area. Why compensate differently for the same value creation? If they do go this route, I hope they make it so that remote works still come out ahead (on net savings) of the big office sites. The cynic in me views this as a purposeful policy choice to PREVENT most people from taking on the new remote work allowance. In other words, this may just be a free PR splash to show they're onboard with the trend. > Among the advantages of a dispersed workforce, Mr. Zuckerberg said, is that it will enable more demographic and ideological diversity if recruits aren’t required to work in tech strongholds like the San Francisco Bay Area. This is of critical importance in tech, especially with companies that control the digital public square such as Facebook or Twitter. Allowing employees to live in different political climates, near family, in different lifestyles (more rural), etc. is badly needed. Otherwise, the world's digital public squares fall victim to the ideological monocultures of San Francisco and Seattle.

vecter 6y ago
This is basic supply and demand. Compensation isn't based on "worth" or "value", it's based on market competition. This is the way that your compensation is currently decided, and it's the way that most goods and services in all of existence are priced. People want to have their cake and eat it to, but that's not how the world works.
arduinomancer 6y ago
Companies already pay different based on location for the same job today.
audleman 6y ago
Let's just say they keep pay the same. All the employees who stay will look at those who moved to Pennsylvania and bought a 2br 2bath 2,000 square foot condo for $300k and say "hey, that costs $1.5 million in SF. Why am I not being compensated for the higher cost of living?"
- sunaurus 6y ago
  "Hey, <cheaper alternative that co-worker has> costs less than <expensive alternative that I want>, why am I not being compensated more?" (I think it's a weak argument)

dmode 6y ago

Here's an interesting quote from the verge version of the article "We ran these surveys and asked people what they want to do. Twenty percent of our existing employees said that they were extremely or very interested in working remotely full time. And another 20 percent on top of that said that they were somewhat interested" Another way to read this, is that 80% employees are not interested in remote. Companies doing this at large will probably realize that remote work is not popular as it made out to be. https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/21/21265780/facebook-remote-work-mark-zuckerberg-interview-wfh https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/21/21265780/facebook-remote-...

sharkmerry 6y ago
> Companies doing this at large will probably realize that remote work is not popular as it made out to be. But will they care once the cost savings are realized? Similar things happened with open office floorplans.
bubblicious 6y ago
remote work in the current COVID conditions with outside restrictions, home school, 24/7 juggling between work and babysitting for parents is not the same as your usual remote work conditions. I think the numbers drawn from this COVID WFH are far from the reality.
- eleventyandone 6y ago
  +1 and beyond those specific examples I don't think people have had a chance to fully setup a successful work from home "environment" which might include: dedicated room/office, better connectivity (internet/webcam/headphones), and proper routines/habits. I imagine most people have moved past the "throw a desk in an unused area of the house and work mainly off a laptop" phase of WFH and in to the "have additional monitors, a quality chair, and access to basic office supplies" phase... there's definitely more phases that need to happen and to use the current/limited/reaction based setups as an example of what full-time WFH is is shortsighted, IMHO. Also, there's a company/team culture shift that needs to happen too, which to the parent's point, is hard to just magically do while also balancing all these additional "challenges".

ironman1478 6y ago

I might be in a minority here, but I really don't feel like full time WFH is more productive. It could be indicative of my work place's culture only, but I feel like there are many more meetings now & communication is much harder. Also, it's nice seeing everybody at work, getting lunch, having a coffee break with people, whiteboarding, etc. There is a huge social aspect that is lost with WFH that zoom can't replace. Imo that reduction in socializing has reduced my work performance because I've noticed I just sprint ahead for 4+ hours straight and burn out really hard at the end of the day.

whateveracct 6y ago
As an employee, it doesn't matter if it's more productive. You greatly increase your pay per hour of work given that you don't have to commute and you definitely don't spend 8 hrs of work consumed by work like you are forced to when in an office. Productivity as an employee is about meeting a bar (that you partially define along with your employer). Caring about maximizing productivity is the goal of your employer. But you have some leverage in this job market so it's not like they can squeeze you dry. Remote only helps the employee side of that adversarial relationship.
- bobmalone123 6y ago
  Why do you see the employer/employee relationship as adversarial? Perhaps you are working in the wrong company. You need employers as much as they need employees. It’s a myopic view.
  - klodolph 6y ago
    I think you may be reading something into the term “adversarial” that isn’t there. A relationship can be both adversarial and cooperative at the same time, that is just the nature of human behavior. My personal take on things is that if you don’t recognize the adversarial part of the employer/employee relationship, then you will suffer for it. It’s more healthy to recognize where parties have competing interests, and it’s unhealthy to ignore them. I’d also say that the people who can ignore the adversarial aspects of employment can only do so because of a fair bit of privilege. For example, people will throw around the saying here that “HR is an advocate for the company, not the employee,” but many of us will never really have to deal with HR in a way where it really matters.

mfDjB 6y ago

With all this remote work going on, does anyone know whether this will affect whether companies are willing to relocate people to the USA? Would be a real shame if that was to go.

neonate 6y ago

https://archive.md/XBbjV https://archive.md/XBbjV https://www.theverge.com/facebook/2020/5/21/21265699/facebook-remote-work-shift-workforce-permanent-covid-19-mark-zuckerberg-interview https://www.theverge.com/facebook/2020/5/21/21265699/faceboo...

TheBlerch 6y ago
Thanks for posting the article link. Archive.md, which is a fantastic service, started throwing a 403 Forbidden error and 1001 error from Cloudflare a few days ago. Any idea what’s causing it? Cleared cookies and cache for it already. However I’m able to get to your archived article.
- kablow 6y ago
  Cloudflare dns doesn’t support it, if they’re your dns provider. Some browsers are using them for dns over https which may be the culprit.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - odensc 6y ago
    More specifically they don't support CloudFlare's DNS. The operator of Archive.(today/is/md) has decided to specifically provide bad IPs when the EDNS client subnet extension isn't provided, which CloudFlare's DNS doesn't provide due to privacy concerns. A lot more discussion on this topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828317
- m463 6y ago
  They have some really creepy dns hacks when you access your webpage. you will access <personally>.<identifiable>.<stuff>.pixel.archive.md (also mail.ru)

zaptheimpaler 6y ago

In this thread: SF engineers realize how well paid they are. Did not complain about 2x salary bump when moving to SF. Will complain about 0.5x when moving out of SF. Signs of realization that pay is only weakly correlated with skill yet to be seen.

buboard 6y ago
Stage of grief: 1 to 2
- zaptheimpaler 6y ago
  Existential crisis in 5... 4...
pascalxus 6y ago
If you have a family with kids in daycare at 3000$+ each! and paying 6000$ a month for a crappy 2bd apartment, you'll happily move to the midwest for half the salary. You'd be better off, in terms of standard of living in a midwest town/city at half the SF salary. Now if you're a single person in SF, that's a different story.
- hesdeadjim 6y ago
  Colorado is the sweet spot if you don't require access to lakes or the ocean. I'm about ~$1850 for daycare and a nice house in Boulder is around $1mil. For a FAANG level engineer out here that's not much of a stretch at all.
  - packetlost 6y ago
    Boulder or Seattle are the two places I'd like to move to the most. Sadly I'm stuck in WI for now.
  - pascalxus 6y ago
    1850$ for day care is still somewhat high. In TX, you can find daycare for 600$ or so.

conqrr 6y ago

This mostly doesn't change much. Most people who come to high pay areas come for the pay and opportunity and will continue to do so. Sounds more like PR. It's yet to be seen if productivity is better or worse.

Diederich 6y ago
> It's yet to be seen if productivity is better or worse The rest of the source announcement covered that. It was noted that individual productivity was the same or better, but there were concerns about collaboration.

Diederich 6y ago

As an aside: the announcement started at 10:00 Pacific and Mark continued to speak for an hour. This story (and many others!) were created and posted well before any of the details were mentioned. I'm not saying that's bad, but it was strange getting e-mails from people with links to fully formed news articles even while I was watching the announcement live.

packetslave 6y ago
It's very common for large companies to give stories to journalists early with an embargo date/time. #notspeakingforfacebook

caogecym 6y ago

This would increase the talent pool for tech companies that goes remote. e.g. U.S. companies could hire more international developers without sponsoring work visa for them.

golergka 6y ago

Cool. Cool cool cool. I don't live in US and don't want to immigrate at the moment for a variety of personal reasons. But I am competent and professional, and would be happy to deliver just as much as a SF-based engineer for half the pay. (When I said cool, I meant, it's really cool for me. It might not be as cool for a US-based HN reader).

higeorge13 6y ago
Exactly! Most HN readers don't realize the real amount of talent outside of US waiting for this opportunity. There are thousands of people who would easily work at any top-notch companies but were just not willing to leave their home towns, their families, friends, local lifestyle etc. And now they can easily work to such companies with /2 or /3 of the standard SF wage.

realbarack 6y ago

I've added the news on Facebook's permanent WFH policy in this spreadsheet where I've been tracking WFH announcements: https://airtable.com/shrC1mvKjwntaqocO/tbl73UY1jDmReLge7 https://airtable.com/shrC1mvKjwntaqocO/tbl73UY1jDmReLge7

mFixman 6y ago
This is really useful. Thanks for accumulating this data!
- realbarack 6y ago
  No problem! I'm glad you found it useful.

derivativethrow 6y ago

These are the requirements for an existing employee to move to full-time remote, according to the all-hands today: 1. Level IC5 or higher (this is what most would call "senior"). 2. Can't have performance less than meets expectations in last two reviews. 3. Permission from team and manager.

cma 6y ago
Sounds like Scientology's requirements for making trips out of the compound.

aelleth 6y ago

Zuckerberg live Q&A: https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10111936118050541 https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10111936118050541

ozzyoli 6y ago

As a Brit; I'm a capitalist with a sprinkle of socialism. I'm disappointing none of these tech companies are acknowledging the happiness that comes from camaraderie and togetherness. (Note: I don't have a family though) I love the company of others; and the unpredictability of what my day has in store when I venture out my front door. Everybody working from home for me sounds like one step closer towards a blander, lonelier, disengaged, dispassionate, oppressed workforce.

maigret 6y ago
You can still find places to work with other peoples, or spontaneously meet your colleagues in a much nicer (and possibly nearer) place. When the COVID crisis will go, you'll find tons of options to meet people thorough the day and enjoy a great social life. Working from home is a pandemic thing, afterwards you could work from anywhere you want.
ativzzz 6y ago
> I'm disappointing none of these tech companies are acknowledging the happiness that comes from camaraderie and togetherness Exactly, which is why I work so I can experience camaraderie and togetherness with the people I actually want to: my family and my friends. Working from home allows me to do that more, much more than working in an office.

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago

Hmm...I wonder if I'll be hearing from them again. I've been recruited a few times by FB, but the relationship ended when I told them that I won't be commuting into the city to work in that massive bullpen. Unlike a lot of folks, I don't have much against them. The people I've interacted with have been a decent, diverse, crew, and I use the platform fairly lightly. The chances are better than even that I wouldn't be considered a "cultural fit" with the company (I'm a bit "long in the tooth," and I've found that's a "showstopper," these days). Also, I specialize in writing native Apple software in Swift. I don't think that's a stack they are really interested in. Still not sure if I would take any jobs there, but it hasn't gotten past the initial phase anyway, so it has not been a decision that I've had to struggle with.

packetslave 6y ago
> The chances are better than even that I wouldn't be considered a "cultural fit" with the company (I'm a bit "long in the tooth," and I've found that's a "showstopper," these days). Anecdata: I'm 40+ and as far as I can tell, I fit in just fine. > Also, I specialize in writing native Apple software in Swift. I don't think that's a stack they are really interested in. A recent earnings release said that 90+% of FB ad revenue is from mobile. Between Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsAp, IOS is definitely a company priority (although I don't think we've publicly released stats on Android vs. IOS). I don't actually know if/how-much Swift we're doing vs. ObjC (I'm on the server side of things, not the client)
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  The people I talked to described a massive ObjC monorepo (Instagram). Not sure about the FB app, but you guys did invent React, so I suspect that platform-dedicated solutions are not high on the guest list.

sb52191 6y ago

I've read a few of these work from home related articles here on HN and I have to say, I'm super surprised by how many people are both vehemently against the idea of remote and generally pessimistic for what it would mean for society. Maybe I'm in the minority here, but my main hobby outside of work is outdoors related. I consistently spend my Friday nights driving 3+ hours to the mountains. The idea of being able to up and move to a mountain town, save the hours I'd be commuting to work AND commuting to the mountains, is so exciting to me. And that's on top of just the happiness I'd get being able to look out my window and see (what I consider) nature vs the cookie cutter buildings of suburbia Silicon Valley. Where are the cyclists, the surfers, the skiiers/snowboarders, dirt bikers, rock climbers, etc etc in these threads? I really can't believe there are that few of us... But on top of just hobbies, I'd be so excited to see what society could look like in a much more remote world. I think a lot of people would spread out and leave Silicon Valley (but not everyone obviously). I think you'd see more small/medium sized towns pop up across the US that would develop their own uniqueness and character. Traffic deaths would likely go down because people would drive less. Maybe general physical fitness/health would go up because people aren't sitting in their cars and have time to exercise? People working minimum wage jobs would likely have better access to housing as demand spreads and isn't as concentrated. We could see a maaassssive change in the lives of the population, and I'm optimistic it would be for the better. Note: I'm not saying everyone should be fully remote, or that working remote works for everyone, but the general lack of any real optimism about what life COULD be like in these threads is surprising to me.

121789 6y ago
I think people are rightfully wary about massive employment changes that could have significant negative consequences. I see a slow shift from treating ICs like people with differentiated skillsets to undifferentiated drones. I think that rarely works out for the employee.
- sb52191 6y ago
  "I see a slow shift from treating ICs like people with differentiated skillsets to undifferentiated drones. I think that rarely works out for the employee." I see it as the opposite. If an employer goes from mandating everyone be in office all the time, to allowing ICs to have a choice, doesn't that treat them less like an undifferentiated drone and acknowledge that some people work better WFH and others don't, or that for some projects you might want to be away from the office for extended periods of time?

SNosTrAnDbLe 6y ago

For me, my commute reduced from 1 hour each way to zero and that 2 hours of my life that I get back had a huge impact on my productivity. I am an engineer and I feel that I collaborate and prioritize using asynchronous messaging so much better. Even though I was really working only 40 hours, it felt like I was working for 60 or even more when I was working from office

knorker 6y ago

Thank you Facebook for being a leader and forcing competitors to at least consider the same, and other companies to cargo cult it. More jokingly: I guess Facebook employees didn't get the hint when they got the biggest open office plan in the world. Zuck must have been very confused when they made the worst office in the world yet people still showed up. Now he's pretty much telling them to stay away. I assumed he's tired of interacting with "people" all the time, while building a social network.

focus2020 6y ago

Companies are realising the amount they save with infrastructure Costs. Even indian service companies TCS is going 75 percent workers fully remote.

nostromo 6y ago

Our cities are going to be so sad after all of these changes. Knowledge workers are all going to be in the suburbs or working from home. Restaurants and bars will be shuttered en masse. Parks and shopping plazas will be empty. Trains and busses will be ignored in favor of cars. This really does look like it could be the end of new urbanism and the revenge of the suburbs.

mcfunk 6y ago
Seems a bit extreme. Plenty of people (younger people especially) prefer living in a city regardless of where they work.
nameless912 6y ago
Counterpoint: as a late 20something software engineer, I'm taking the opportunity to work remotely as motivation to move to a (cheaper) city and live right in the heart of downtown. Now that I can choose where I work, I can move to a city I love that's a bit cheaper than my current location, own a house in an awesome neighborhood, and hopefully take much more advantage of what the city has to offer. As of now, I've done very little exploring in my current (very large) city because 1) I live on the outskirts to be able to afford my rent, 2) I had to drive almost an hour each way to get to work, and 3) I was so "busy" due to my commute that I was exhausted in the evenings and busy with keeping the house in order on the weekends. Frankly, working remotely is giving me the opportunity to actually participate in the city culture I wanted so badly, but on a scale that's much easier to digest and enjoy.

veselin 6y ago

One should keep in mind that all the "forever" claims by corporations are forever only until some VP quits. The moment the productivity of remote employees goes measurably worse than the one of local employees, there will be immediate reason to reverse these plans. Yes, some companies are 100% remote and they do well, but I think it is because they hire from another less competitive (for compensation) pool. I.e. they pay low end silicon valley salaries in cheap markets and manage to get very high-end talent.

urmish 6y ago

Imagine all the cultural export that used to happen earlier from California. All that will ideally either stop or tech companies will somehow find a way to make it worse and bring cancel culture to remote workplaces.

oxfordmale 6y ago

Working from home doesn't work with Facebook's appraisal system, where you need to s* up to your peers and managers all the time to get anywhere in your career. Most Facebook employees will eventually be back in the office, as it is difficult to build up such relations when remote working only.

polygot 6y ago

There's a lot of people who are treating remote work as binary; it has to be 100% remote or 100% onsite. I think that some will benefit from it (those whose commutes are long for example), and some may have children at home and thus can't work as productively. Could it be possible to work from home most of the days, but not all of them?

alexchantavy 6y ago

As a city guy, I'm somewhat concerned about how this pattern of remote work may permanently change life in the cities. I enjoy living in a densely populated area and being around people walking to and from work and having spontaneous interactions. If knowledge work becomes largely remote then I think cities could lose a lot of this vibrancy as people may not have a lot of reason to cluster in this way in the future. Side note, Richard Florida's "Rise of the Creative Class" talks about a lot of the effects and benefits of people clustering in cities (but in my opinion he only does a so-so job talking about the causes), and I'd be curious to see what other urban planners think about changes like this.

chillacy 6y ago
On the bright side though, cities might become more diverse (instead of being tech bubbles where only programmers can afford rent). It may also undo some of the brain drain happening to cities in the middle of the country, which could revitalize / modernize them.

trhway 6y ago

This is basically another way of outsourcing. Looks good on paper as always. Whether it will really be cost effective - YMMV as many companies found in the past. While the salaries of rank and file ICs will go down, the salary of organizationally key people able to manage the outsourced work - PM/architect/manager - would go up. They would be flown in regularly for important meetings, paid high cost temporary housing while in the town, etc. We had that supposedly key architect on the team who was coming for 2 months every 2 months from abroad and the company was paying for the flying and everything while he was here.

fourmyle 6y ago

I find people who have never actually worked remotely before are all jazzed going full time remote. People who have done it before, like myself, will tell them it's not for everyone and has some downsides. Once people realize they can't just go snowboarding in the middle of the day and need to actively find human interaction to avoid depression and isolation while getting paid less they will change their tune. The ideal setup is 1-2 days per week WFH and flexible WFH while traveling for the holidays so you don't have burn through vacation days IMO.

allsystemsgo 6y ago

Amazing how many people are so against remote work here. Hey, here’s a thought. Let people choose how and where they work best. /thread.

dang 6y ago

Related ongoing thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23264521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23264521

rcpt 6y ago

I don't really like working from home but I hate the Bay Area. Same price as NYC but it's a boring sprawling suburb no different from Florida or Texas. Sure the mountains and weather are nice but I'm not paying rent to the trees.

rargulati 6y ago

I do feel like HN is having a rehash of a conversation we've had many times this past month. I'll post my favorite comment [1] on the matter of remote salary adjustment, which captures a key market effect we all seem to forget (Bay Area specific): ----------------------------------------------------- "Cost of Living" adjustments are a red herring, what they really are is really "competition density". There are plenty of tech companies paying great salaries in the bay because they have to, otherwise they would just go work for someone else. On the other hand, if you lived in Oklahoma you aren't going to say no to $LOCAL_OFFER+10k just because bay area salaries are $LOCAL_OFFER+90k. As long as this disparity exists, I forsee bay area salaries and CoL still being high. Until companies move headquarters out of the bay, the trend will continue. ----------------------------------------------------- Similarly, in this thread, Consultant32452 states [2] that the real argument is between those who can demand a high salary regardless of geography, and those who can only demand a high salary _because_ of geography. The mistake is many people in the latter group think they are in the former. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23162855 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23162855 by hn user nemothekid [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23265158 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23265158 by hn user Consultant32452

rokhayakebe 6y ago
KEY, The mistake is many people in the latter group think they are in the former.
- anon102010 6y ago
  What's a bit interesting is that as a consultant with an OK rate I always attributed it to being onsite, directly talking with top management (what I do is routine so pay is basically for being able to interact successfully up and down org chart). This meant I felt very GEOGRAPHICALLY tied down. Now I've not shown up onsite to ANYONE in 3+ months (we went remote early before shutdown). And it's not clear to me that value has diminished, though I need to up my zoom game a bit. So some people may be discovering they thought they were geo tied / competitive but may be more broadly valuable or able to serve into that market remotely more easily than they thought?

eezurr 6y ago

Potential downsides include: 1. Increased eye strain from staring at a screen all day. Look up "Computer Vision" 2. "Zoom" fatigue. Less participation in meetings because interruptions need to be repeated to be heard. 3. More hours sitting in the same chair in the same position. 4. No pre/post meeting conversation to catch up/tie up loose ends. (This wont work in a zoom meeting where you cant turn and lower your voice to the person sitting next to you). 5. Now no second place. The US is already losing it's third place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place . Where are you going to make friends and find a romantic partner? 6. Transfer of real estate cost to employees. Especially couples. Now you might need two offices in your house. 7. Machine learning employee monitoring programs. i.e. spyware on your own computers. Is your APM up to par? Cant fake me you scrag. 8. Video monitoring in your own home. Can your boss see (and hear?) you working at your desk? 9. Habit building: used to hit the gym before heading home? Now it's less convenient to get there. 10. You now have to feed yourself, at your own expense. You get to clean the mess too. 11. Live in a the city in a tiny bedroom or studio apartment? Do you have roommates? Have fun working in that environment all day. 12. Attention seeking children/pets at home while you're trying to work 13. No more office perks. 14. Have an annoying neighbor who wont turn the music down? Live next to a hospital? I could go on

jonny383 6y ago

Now all of our personal data can be accessed from home. Lovely.

rajacombinator 6y ago

My productivity and quality of life are both much higher WFH. And I’m even more willing to work longer hours, for any gulag drivers who happen to be reading.

geodel 6y ago

A large number of comments here looks like every employee at Facebook is exceptionally skilled and critically important. I read somewhere only square root of total employee strength are doing critical work in the company. Now I do not have any proof of this but I am working at company which would have may be 5K work force in IT organization. Here I am regularly surprised that hardly 10-15 names out of 100s pop up every time on any important issue for projects which I have some relation with. Doing same analysis with facebook would mean there would be 250 or so employees who can seriously negotiate salaries with them for being critical to company. Of course some people would get lucky or unlucky despite being less or more important. But I think this is delusional to think that most of ~50K strong workforce in FB will be able to get their compensation demands like bay area salary in middle america accepted by company.

saiya-jin 6y ago

Brainstorming over a coffee/lunch/whatever, pair programming/debugging (especially debugging!), and generally meetings in person can't be replaced effectively by any video call. It just doesn't work, and never did. Maybe with proper VR one day it will, but I will be retired by then. Folks here who benefit from commute cut will keep celebrating WFH like new age of something, but for many companies, especially multinational corps, that's desperate temporary measure and it sucks for most folks in one way or another. Managers don't want it, many employees don't want it. Don't keep your hopes up just because few companies change their policies a bit to look more attractive for new hires. Also as other state, expect some salary re-adjustments based on that.

dzonga 6y ago

great move, from fb. given they've a global product. it democratizes opportunity. plenty of people suffer from the misfortune of having been born in the wrong country. I see the trend continuing. one thing, I see is immigrant friendly countries gonna benefit from this more e.g Canada, Chile. And places with high quality of life, low cost of living.

imheretolearn 6y ago

In my opinion, WFH vs on-site is analogous to reading a physical book vs an e-book. Some people will prefer one over the other. Considering the above analogy holds, most companies will allow both, remote work and on-site.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

xtat 6y ago

kicking and screaming

xtat 6y ago

Also, zucc publicly stated intentions to adjust salary for anyone that moves out of the bay area. You can tell already it's gonna suck to work remotely at facebook.

alanlamm 6y ago

I am surprised that of the pages and pages of comments that I have read (about 500+ comments), few discuss the potential implications of (a) having virtually all of a business's communication (not just the emails and such, but now also the meetings) potentially tracked and monitored, and (b) whether a remote workforce would be even less well equipped to identify/call-out improper corporate behaviour. Would the Google employees that called-out some of the surveillance projects, or the Uber employees that called out harassment exist remotely? And if they did, isn't it just so much easier to get rid of them? "Susan will not be joining the call today. She no longer works here". A scenario in which HQ gets to know everything while every individual is forced into need-to-know seems dystopian to me.

wyattpeak 6y ago
I don't know how much I think it would have an effect. Google employees didn't know about the surveillance projects because they found out on-site, they knew about them because Google chose to make them known. Plenty of companies keep secrets from their employees, and those secrets largely remain safe despite employees working on premises. And outside of Google, who had until recently a very open culture of critiquing decisions, almost all calling-out happened through non-company channels. And is it really so much easier to get rid of them? Presumably they'll have the same legal protections they previously did, and having to be physically removed from the building isn't exactly a major limitation on firing.
buboard 6y ago
unless you are being surveilled with a camera or sth, you can use anything to communicate (which you normally can't do in an office). And having more work opportunities readily available makes it easier to call-out and quit , no? You also don't need to conform to a physically concentrated groupthink. In many ways, remote work is better in all those terms

bg24 6y ago

Winner: Human talent, no matter where they live. Loser: Real Estate.

torgian 6y ago

I can’t help but feel like there is going to be a glut of privacy invasive technologies coming down the pipeline real soon for managers to keep their jobs.

gabagoo 6y ago

Ironic that a company so eager to do this still does not have any legitimate customer support staff.

diogenescynic 6y ago

Where will all these Bay Area people move to if they leave? Sacramento, Tahoe, Los Angeles, Denver?

sjg007 6y ago

They are saying the first wave of WFH will be in cities were they have offices already. In many of those cities Google and Amazon also have offices. Austin is probably going to become very competitive on salaries as well. And as many have seen, home prices and COL have risen in these cities accordingly. So if you do want to work from home for one of the big tech companies be sure to live in a metro that has at least another big tech company in it. This will be a boost for "tier 2" metros with tech companies that support this pattern. Salaries will be going up in those metros. Also if you can WFH for FB, you should be able to WFH for all the other major tech companies which will compete for you using salary and stock etc...