As tech workers we might realize that the pendulum has swung in our direction for some time now: remote work, higher salaries with better benefits, driven by lo

As tech workers we might realize that the pendulum has swung in our direction for some time now: remote work, higher salaries with better benefits, driven by lots of liquidity and high valuations. Even the notion of a 4-day workweek is creeping in. Now, as valuations regress, you have Google’s CEO saying workers should be more “entrepreneurial” and Facebook saying do more work with less and under more intense scrutiny, widespread layoffs and hiring freezes, it’s clear the pendulum is starting to swing in the other direction. You may reject the pendulum analogy but you can’t deny the inherent cyclicality in these things. As for holiday shutdowns, I think these actually benefit the company more than the employee. If you give people a week off they were most likely going to take some or all of anyway, they tend to accept less floating PTO and then it just nets out to coordinated PTO. This prevents clever folks from taking those 5-7 days during peak periods and working the relaxed time when so many people are out of office you can’t really deliver on anything significant anyway.