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Facebook extends its work-at-home policy to most employees
- tester756 5y agoit's 1.5 year into pandemic, wtf? I guess it's never too late
- packetslave 5y agoThis is the policy for after the offices open back up. We've been 100% WFH (except for essential workers) for over a year, just like everyone else.
- schoolornot 5y agoA bit of a snarky comment but I do agree that many tech companies have been sitting on their hands waiting to mimic what the FANG companies are going to do next.
- wly_cdgr 5y agoBeautiful. There's no good reason for most of us to be in the office these days and I'm glad to see even big companies starting to acknowledge reality
- danbrooks 5y agoClearly great news for Facebook employees. For reference, the previous policy was that only level 5+ could request to work remotely.
- gricardo99 5y agowhat is "level 5+"?
- rejectedandsad 5y agoNew grad is L3, mid level L4, senior L5.
- FearlessNebula 5y agoIf new grad is L3 then what are L1 and L2?
- dangwu 5y agoNon-engineering stuff, typically. Cafeteria workers, security, etc.
- FearlessNebula 5y agoSo I suppose intern is also L3?
- rejectedandsad 5y agoAt my company intern engineers are the same level as new grads yes.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- magneticnorth 5y agohttps://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Facebook,Google,Amazon,Apple&track=Software%20Engineer https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Facebook,Google,Amazon,Apple... Roughly, "senior" at a lot of places.
- nick0garvey 5y agoL3 is new grad L4 is an intermediate level - you must be promoted to L5 in a fixed time frame (2-3 yearish) L5 is a senior level
- leoh 5y ago>you must be promoted to L5 in a fixed time frame (2-3 yearish) What happens if you don't?
- dado3212 5y agoYou're basically evaluated according to L5 requirements. Given that you weren't promoted at that point, it's likely you're not performing at those requirements, and you'll be slowly managed out. More often as people get close to the red zone, they just swap companies preemptively.
- leoh 5y agoHow does this contrast with Google?
- dado3212 5y agoGoogle’s terminal level is L4. Not sure what happens if you’re not promoted in the given timeline.
- steelframe 5y agoI used to manage a team at Google. L3 basically meant you had to be told what to do. L4 meant that while you may not regularly give a lot of strategic direction to the team, you could be relied upon to just pick up the ball and carry it forward toward shared objectives. Your code was good enough to not require a bunch of time- and energy-wasting back-and-forth with reviewers. What you delivered stood on its own and was more an asset than a liability to the team and the product. If, after a few years, you still need to be told what to do in order to be productive day-to-day, you’re simply not developing, and unless you figure out what’s going on you’re probably going to struggle to build a successful career. For my own team, the bar I set for giving higher assessment ratings was how well you could make and keep commitments to the team. If, after working in the code base with the group of people for a year or so, you couldn’t independently come up with useful things to commit to doing and couldn’t deliver in the timeframes you said you could, I would start asking you whether you are really happy and motivated doing what you’re doing with your career. For the few times I had to do that, the member of my team ended up admitting to themselves that they were making a mistake trying to do this type of work, and they moved on to something else where they were more happy and successful.
- reducesuffering 5y agoAvg. 4-5 years of FB experience out of college or 8 years of experience in industry.
- digbert 5y ago> Clearly great news for Facebook employees. For some Facebook employees, definitely. Personally, I think I'll be finding a job elsewhere now.
- magneticnorth 5y agoI'm curious to hear why - what do you see as the drawback of more remote coworkers?
- digbert 5y agoMostly that by having remote co-workers I get many of the downsides of remote work without any of the upsides. Once a few colleagues are remote, all collaboration has to assume remote as the default. Even if I'm in the office I'm still stuck with remote collaboration, but I still have a commute.
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y agoFacebook is pretty big. Couldn't you just find a team that is predominately in the office?
- Izikiel43 5y agoWhy don't you become remote then? Remote all the things!
- digbert 5y agoThat's one option, but personally I find remote utterly miserable and terrible for collaboration. I'd rather find a job where I see my colleagues in person. The upsides for me of being in the office massively outweigh the downsides, but only if my colleagues are there too.
- Mehdi2277 5y agoBecause they enjoy the office. I prefer going to the office some but not most days and like occasional trips elsewhere so full remote is fine. I have friends who really like the social aspect of the office and working on a team where most of their teammates are remote would be very undesirable to them. In practice I feel like you could just aim to have some teams be mostly people who like office and other teams be mostly remote. Would be awkward hiring wise though to send someone to a different team just on there office vs remote view.
- distrill 5y agoAdditionally, previous guidance was 1 day per week from home. Now it's 2.5.
- tracyhenry 5y agoThis is great news for some, but not for most. What will happen is that most employees will choose to return to onsite work because of the perks and deeper connections with colleagues. If most of your team is not working remotely - let's be honest - it'll be hard for a remote worker to not feel disconnected with the rest of the team.
- EugeneOZ 5y agoSo now Facebook is better than Apple for the employees.
- voisin 5y agoDepends on whether, in the long run, employees who choose WFH are treated the same.
- justapassenger 5y agoI don't think that Apple ever had a vibe as being especially great for employees. Secrecy to a level that you may not know what product you're actually working on, and heavy top down management as a result.
- foxpurple 5y agoThey also basically ban you from working on open source. One employee detailed that they could not release some improvements they made to a Wordpress photo gallery plug-in because legal told them it competes with the iPhone/iCloud photo gallery.
- rejectedandsad 5y agoYeah, in terms of software working at Apple is impressive for the fact that their products are luxuries, not for any real technical reasons. Hardware is totally different though
- thrwn_frthr_awy 5y agoYou don't think Apple has technical challenges in their software? That's really interesting to hear. I worked on software there for five years and it was some of the most interesting work I've been a part of. What do you consider impressive in software?
- rejectedandsad 5y agoNot to the same extent as their hardware, which is best-in-the-industry as the A-series and M1 have proved. This is some what Ive heard based on the teams in IS&T, and the fact that most of the most technically challenging software products, like the SDKs, OS, system apps effectively seem to have a 1 year release cycle. Then again the place I work isn’t considered impressive in software at all so…
- alpacaillama 5y agoWonder if they will hire more in UK/Canada now?
- curtisholmes 5y agoNot sure about the UK, but as someone who lives in Canada and works at a tech company, I've recently been getting a blitz of linkedin messages and facebook ads encouraging me to apply to facebook as a remote employee.
- alpacaillama 5y agoWas that for all roles or only 5+ years of experience?
- analyst74 5y agoNot sure about other positions, but they're hiring fully remote engineers in Canada. Rumours say the pay package is about 60~70% of bay area.
- kleinsch 5y agoFB is hiring like crazy in UK/Canada.
- scotuswroteus 5y agoFor FB WFHers wondering whether COL adjustments are in the cards https://mashable.com/article/mark-zuckerberg-instagram-whatsapp-independence/ https://mashable.com/article/mark-zuckerberg-instagram-whats...
- _rs 5y agoSorry how does this article address this at all?
- scotuswroteus 5y agoThank you for your question
- rejectedandsad 5y agoEven if they do them they’re extremely unlikely to be significant
- warkdarrior 5y agoAfter you move to a low COL area, you are really at their mercy, no?
- ed25519FUUU 5y agoA year ago? Sure. Now the market for remote engineers is competitive. I basically eliminated my mortgage by selling and moving. My salary can go way down without affecting my living standards.
- warkdarrior 5y agoActually at that point you are at the mercy of the local ISP.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
- magneticnorth 5y agoI am really curious to see where we'll be in a year, two, three down the line wrt remote/office/hybrid work at major companies. This forced experiment has had some surprising outcomes about the effectiveness of remote workplaces, but working from home for only a year, in pandemic conditions, is clearly not the same as indefinitely in normal times. But there's reason to think that may go even better, not worse; I am really curious to see how it plays out and glad more companies are continuing to let people work remotely.
- admissionsguy 5y ago> has had some surprising outcomes about the effectiveness of remote workplaces Curious, what are the outcomes?
- foxpurple 5y agoReplacing predictions with experienced reality. Seeing things continue as normal and at full pace while working from home which many expected was not possible. Our company was quite restrictive of working from home previously but after last year seeing that we had our most productive year ever, things loosened up a lot.
- ludamad 5y agoDoes anyone have a convincing break-down of the overall economic effect? Remote has meant I sleep more (compared to a long commute). As well, my home has advantages - there's a dog here, patio access, etc. I think communication can be hard to do right, but I'm not sure if this resulted in more faults
- magneticnorth 5y agoI was mostly just referring to the fact that team/org/company productivity does not seem reduced compared to pre-pandemic times. As far as I know, no major tech company is dealing with more outages/incidents or slower product launches than they typically saw, unless their business model was directly impacted by spending pattern changes. I think most companies expected lower output from forced-all-remote teams but don't seem to be seeing it.
- capncleaver 5y agoThe choice between mandatory ‘more than half time’ in the office and completely remote (‘with on/offsites!’) is interesting. Swooping through the office for meetings is discouraged. What a challenge for management!
- someelephant 5y agoLet's be real. The loser here is middle managers. Not all of them. Just the ones who feed off of the high they get from having control over the office environment.
- benatkin 5y agoThis hinges on the following: > "Zuckerberg said employees who want to work in an office will be asked to come in at least half the time." I agree - part time remote work will be bad for micromanagers.
- missedthecue 5y agoIt will be bad for the permanent wfh employees. While they are eating lunch at home, their coworkers will be grabbing lunch with the boss, building those relationships, and getting all the promotions and raises.
- alexlesuper 5y agoI feel like this is a case of having your cake and eating it too.
- roberto 5y agoI'd rather have the option of having lunch at home, with my family, than at work with my boss, even if it costs a promotion.
- baby 5y ago+1
- stephc_int13 5y agoI feel the same. Middle management is not always useful, they mostly have the role of herding dogs, but if the work is not dumb and soul-crushing I don't think most people need to be herded. (and I am talking as someone who built companies and led teams)
- wintermutestwin 5y agoThe bloomberg article mentions potential CoL adjustments: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-09/facebook-says-it-will-expand-remote-work-to-all-employees https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-09/facebook-... It is interesting that the Slashdot crowd was fairly universal in panning the idea of paying people less if they lived in a low cost area. In my 17 years as a designated "teleworker" at a SV megacorp, they adjusted compensation ratios. This meant that they didn't reduce my salary when I moved from an expensive city to a cheap mountain town, I just didn't get raises for a few years because my comp ratio was too high. I don't understand why people would rail against this kind of policy. It certainly didn't motivate me to move back to an expensive city. I'm not sure how well this would work out for those geo-arbitrage digital nomads, but I don't think that companies should be particularly accommodating that corner case.
- JulianMorrison 5y agoI think it would be reasonable to pay people extra if they live in an expensive place, and the company actually needs them to be in that place. Like maybe they have to be able to get on site at short notice, so they need to live right by the office, or the data center.
- schoolornot 5y agoFor new hires I suppose it's okay but to adjust the pay of an existing worker whose output remains the same afterwards because they relocated is a bit insulting to me. It's a pay cut, not a "COLA".
- fbggthro 5y ago>whose output remains the same This is irrelevant, though. You aren't paid based on your output, you're paid based on how much you cost. Think of how much you pay for water. In place A, you might pay $0.02 per gallon of water. You move to place B, and they only charge $0.01 gallon of water. Are you going to keep paying $0.02/gallon? The value that the water provides to you hasn't changed, but why would you keep paying $0.02 when you could get it for $0.01? In FB's view, you aren't any different. Even if you provide the same value, there's no reason to keep paying you $300k when they could pay you (or someone who replaces you) $150k.
- flakiness 5y agoOne thing I'm curious is how Facebook's remote / distributed work culture (if exits) helps this move. Some company has strong on-site culture. FB probably has some of that, but I suspect they also have some strong online-talking culture using their internal Facebook (for Workplace?) and maybe more. After all, their service is about connecting people online. Zuckerberg definitely has that in his mind.
- dreyfan 5y agoI currently have 10 fully remote engineering jobs. The bar is so low, oversight is non-existent, and everyone is so forgiving for under performance I can coast about 4-8 weeks before a given job fires me. Currently on a $1.5M run-rate for comp this year. And the interviewing process is so much faster today, companies are desperate, it takes me 2-3hrs of total effort to land a new job with thousands to chose from.
- kookiekrak 5y agoobvious troll, ok
- Areading314 5y agoYou should spend some of that money on good legal counsel
- UncleOxidant 5y agoWhy should they? Unless it's some kind of contract I don't think you can be sued for not doing your job - you can be fired (and likely would be), but incompetence doesn't generally lead to legal problems.
- ipsum2 5y agoConflict of interest - say you're working for two companies that are in vaguely similar spaces (e.g. Google and Apple). Seems like grounds for a lawsuit.
- woeirua 5y agoMany employment contracts expressly forbid you from accepting other employment without prior authorization from the company. If his employment contracts contain that provision, then he would definitely be in breach. But... damages would probably be limited to just the salary that the company paid.
- Areading314 5y ago
- cphoover 5y agoM
- grouphugs 5y agoahhh, the benefits of being employeed by threat actor data funnels
- shadowtree 5y agoJust watch until many realize that WFH leads to people moving within the greater US and what timezone differences truly mean to your work-life balance. Living in pacific time zone and dealing with Europe, East Coast and Asia just suuuuuuuuuuuuucks.
- ipaddr 5y agoMost places only allow local timezones, even european jobs.
- bradlys 5y agoDoesn’t stop the mandatory cross team meetings with the dudes in Hyderabad at 3am.
- gravypod 5y agoAn alternative perspective: I work in EST and my coworkers are in Munich. It takes planning but it works out fine. We picked meeting times for critical things that line up correctly between us all, do minimal meetings, etc. I've also been on boarding to an extremely large and complex company at this point and so far I am CME. At my previous company we also had people on the west coast and east coast. The main thing: be flexible and reasonable. Does standup have to happen at 8AM? Will the world end of it's at noon? Probably not.
- darth_avocado 5y agoIt’s interesting, because I’m currently interviewing with them and I definitely am hearing a lot of expectations of coming to the office at least a couple days a week. Which is pretty much in line with what the expectations were pre pandemic.
- heavyset_go 5y agoBring up the content of this article.
- r00fus 5y agoAs someone who lives near a lot of FB employees I’m happy for them as well as for all the others who won’t have to suffer the impact of those employees commuting. This is an all around good thing.
- johannes1813 5y agoI've been back in my company's office in person (medium-sized tech company) for the last week with a small subset of employees before we all go back, and I've become pretty convinced that these hybrid models will not go well. Even while wearing masks and social distancing, I feel far more connected to the others that work in the office, and whether it's fair or not, personal connection and trust play a huge role in collaborating effectively and deciding who gets what work, who gets promoted, etc. If everyone can choose whatever combination of remote and in-person they want, it seems impossible to me that there won't be extremely strong in-group/out-group effects that will cause big organizational problems for companies. But I'm saying this as a young person excited to work in person, so maybe others (parents, those with long commutes) feel it's still worth it.
- Igelau 5y ago> But I'm saying this as a young person excited to work in person, so maybe others (parents, those with long commutes) feel it's still worth it. Parent of three, going on four. Get me out of here!
- johannes1813 5y agoTotally reasonable and I'm glad for parents that there will be options now
- tolbish 5y agoThat sounds like a problem with the pandemic, not a problem with remote work.
- ttul 5y agoSimilar situation. My solution was to rent a tiny office in my town. It’s awesome! Three minute commute.
- dosethree 5y agoHow much does it run you?
- throw2932away 5y agoI've honestly been thinking through what it would be like to have a second full-time job. And by that, I mean actually executing satisfactory work for two organizations for the long-term. I work in a relatively niche space and am able to operate at a more efficient level than the type of employee most companies are looking to hire for the salary the employer wants to pay. I make good money but if I ran at 100% capacity, I'd run out of things to do. Unfortunately at this point, there aren't a ton of opportunities to lead larger teams at larger organizations so I'm wondering if it would make more sense to just pick up a second job doing what I'm doing now. Effort and execution-wise, I can't imagine it being a problem. If it were, I'm pretty sure I could outsource certain tasks to overcome those hurdles. The part I'm not so sure about is maintaining visibility and how on earth you could coordinate meetings to avoid being double-booked while still maintaining at least the appearance of availability. I guess the difficult part with what I do is the fact that I do need to communicate with a fair number of people within the organization.
- Teknoman117 5y agoI have a friend who works for two unicorns remotely in different product spaces (with their approval) since he left school. He essentially lives in a hacker commune, has been pulling in a half million a year, and plans to retire in his mid 30's and live off of the interest. I envy his resolve, but it's certainly not the life for me.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- BooneJS 5y agoThe job market is really tight, and if others offer near-Facebook-level comp with WFH, they have to compete.
- MathYouF 5y agoLiterally told a FB recruiter yesterday I was already earning near FB comp for global remote work, and for that reason I wasn't even intersted in interviewing for the position they were offering which required in the office work in SF after "corona ended".
- cletus 5y agoSpeaking as someone who now works remotely permanently, this has been... life-changing. So for 10 years I lived in NYC and--don't get me wrong--there are lots of things I liked about NYC but I'm so over the summers and the winters. Also bear in mind that I think NYC is infinitely better for most people to live in than the Bay Area. But I now live in Florida. It's about the 182nd day in a row where it's been 70-80F. Sure it's humid and that may sound weird after the comment about NYC summers but NYC summers are a special kind of hell beyond the heat and humidity. Here there's usually a breeze. I've been here 6 months and I don't even use the AC. Add to that that for the same price as my 50 year old 1 bedroom in NYC I now live in a 3 bedroom duplex apartment. I spend a ton of time outside and this has greatly increased my mood and wellbeing. There are things I definitely miss: camaraderie with my coworkers, free food and the like but honestly I'm just over going into the office. I'm not sure I'll ever do that again. The ability to live anywhere in the country just opens up so many possibilities. It's worth noting that this doesn't enable a true digital nomad lifestyle if that's what you want. That's because you still need to be employed somewhere and you and the company are subject to the employment rules (and taxes) in that locale. Maybe that will change in the future.
- torgian 5y agoIt’s possible if you become a contractor. That’s what I am now, and I have worked for two companies so far. I live outside the states now. But it does mean dealing with your own taxes, charging a higher rate to compensate for those taxes and other bills, etc. however, I’ve found that I can charge higher and the company can still save money simply because they don’t have to pay for things they would normally pay a permanent employee. But, it does come with a risk of losing your job more easily.
- tracyhenry 5y agoThe title missed one important piece: employees who don't choose remote work are required to come to office at least half of the week (i.e. three days). This is a less of a good news for most people.
- jreese 5y agoNote that that's starting in October at the earliest, depending on how/when your local office reopens up. The Menlo Park campus is only "10% open" right now, so the only people in the office are the ones desperate to get out of the house, and we're not expecting the office to be 50% open until September. There is plenty of notice and time for people who really care about working from home to either apply for remote work or slowly adjust back to office work.
- adjkant 5y agoSurprised this isn't higher, that's basically "back full time" to me but with a shorter weekly period. Very different than what I understood reading the headline.
- frebord 5y agoI think it's important to consider that tech companies are still bending over backwards to get the most talented technical skills. if those ppl want remote they probably will get it now that this forced experiment had proven it can work.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y agoMy company has already started its effort to bring all of us back in. There are some exceptions, but it is not clear, who can get it, so it is the usual corporate free for all, which means basically what it always did.. if boss likes us you, they may bestow a favor upon you. Throughout the entire pandemic experience I have become noticeably more cynical, but I have to admit I did not see the ridiculous corporate propaganda 'sitting in traffic is good for you' coming.
- HHC-Hunter 5y ago>corporate propaganda 'sitting in traffic is good for you' coming. Wow, thank you for this comment, I've only sort of just realized this. Eye opening / Watershed moment.
- adventureadmin 5y ago> if boss likes us you, they may bestow a favor upon you. That's the rub with job as well, management simply can't follow their own return-to-office policy uniformly without bleeding talent, which is clearly going to lead to a lot of disgruntled coworkers. It's frustrating too because we have both productive and unproductive employees advocating for remote.
- heavyset_go 5y ago> but I have to admit I did not see the ridiculous corporate propaganda 'sitting in traffic is good for you' coming. Well, someone needs to deal with the repercussions of employers' multiyear leases and investments in real estate. You are a team player, aren't you?
- atlgator 5y agoFacebook plans to organize regular in-person gathers for office and remote workers “to support the relationship-building.” Are relationships in the workplace necessary? In my experience they only move us further away from meritocracy.
- cratermoon 5y agoAre they still doing the "you get paid based on where you live, not how valuable you are to the company" thing?
- baby 5y agoIt was always like that tbh, west coast makes more than east cost which makes more than europe employees
- cratermoon 5y agoYes but that was based on living near (commuting distance from) the company's offices. If my employer's office is in NYC or SF but I live in Oklahoma and work remotely, companies like FB and others I know of will pay me Oklahoma wages. I could be a Level V and make less than a Level I living in the Bay Area.
- swiley 5y agoThe world roles on and the people of CA can decide to accept or not.
- steveBK123 5y agoIt cuts both ways. I love WFH and would love to do it indefinitely. Used to do it 1-2 days/week at prior job. My wife and I are both ICs and introverts, and happy to have the space/privacy/quiet. However, my firm especially is really taking advantage of it. They are getting far more work out of us while acting like they are doing us a favor by not dragging us back yet. Meeting load is up 25-50%, but story points per sprint are still way up. Major strategic projects are progressing, profit is high and customer feedback is positive. Firm is in crazy growth mode. People aren't really using their "unlimited" vacation time. Managers feel welcome to send emails/slacks out of hours and not even ack responses during business hours. Getting hold of them during 9a-6p can take hours, and if you want to have a quick chat put something on their calendar .. good luck finding a slot any sooner than 2 days out. None of this is sustainable after even a hybrid return to the office, and its accompanying time sucks of commuting/lunch pickup/childcare arrangements and people actually having social lives and things to do after work again.
- ckdarby 5y agoThis sounds like poor expectation setting and more poor management. Use your 1:1 time to set reachable hour expectations with your manager. Switch your "quick chats" to Slack messages and /reminds to get your answers in timely fashion.
- anyfoo 5y ago"Unlimited" vacation time is so bizarre to me, it almost seems like a scam to me. Obviously it's not legally binding, otherwise a malicious employee could not work a single day and legally not face repercussions. But in Germany at least, vacation days are a matter of law. The number of days per year is part of the contract, and there is a strict minimum of 24 days (at least in Bavaria). It is as far as I know not legal to prevent people from exhausting their allocated vacation days within the full year, a couple of years ago a court decided that employers have to remind employees when they risk expiring their vacation days after a year. So I guess anyone who has "unlimited" vacation time does not actually have unlimited vacation time, but the opposite: The legal minimum of mandated vacation time, with the option to get additional time on top if the employer agrees. Effectively, any person who even just has one day more than the legal minimum, but fixed, has more right to take time off than someone with "unlimited" vacation!
- apatheticonion 5y agoI wish my company let us work from home. During lockdown, working from home was game changing. As soon as my stocks vest I will join a new company and move further from the city, closer to the beach.
- splithalf 5y agoMore death on the roadways and acceleration of climate change. Thanks Facebook!
- LockDownExposed 5y agoWfH rocks, I haven't worked more than 5 hours a weeks for 15+ months already.
- ttul 5y agoMy office before the pandemic was basically people looking at screens and slacking each other rather than lifting their head up an inch to speak - literally even if the person was one chair over from them. When we went remote, nothing changed other than people no longer had to commute. The feedback from the team has been overwhelmingly and consistently positive. Nobody wants to go back full time - ever. The most they’ll concede is a day or two per week, but I strongly suspect reality will be less than that.