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I see this as more or less a ruse to justify ridding the companies of all the now remote people who moved away to live in Cheap Town during the pandemic. This i

I see this as more or less a ruse to justify ridding the companies of all the now remote people who moved away to live in Cheap Town during the pandemic. This is a pretext for the typical Corporate House Cleaning/Reduction In Force scenario. Some people do well working remote (Im one of them in fact) but I suspect and from what I've seen the majority of people simply cant handle the responsibility/self management of working remote. Alternatively, the economic forecasters at these companies see trouble on the horizon economically and know that layoffs to boost stock price will be necessary. In such case, best develop a pretext for these layoffs thats not "We're having financial trouble so we're laying people off". Instead it's "Nope, nothing to see here, THIS IS FINE - we're just cutting dead weight!". I don't work for either of these companies nor do I know anyone personally who does, but I have to wonder if a sort of entitled, country club culture developed there and this an effort to reign in that behavior. Maybe someone with some inside insight can comment here?

fred_is_fred 4y ago
"I suspect and from what I've seen the majority of people simply cant handle the responsibility/self management of working remote." While this may be true, if this has to be solved by forcing everyone to move to SF/NY - then couldn't you just save more money by firing their managers?
- acdha 4y ago
  Exactly. You can’t make this claim without saying that your managers are incompetent all the way up to the C level because it means nobody was measuring performance even though that’s a core job requirement.
  - lanstin 4y ago
    It is extremely rare for management, especially higher levels, to have any method of distinguishing smart and hard working people from duffers or from “managing upwards” big talkers. Git logs sort of help much interpretation is so context sensitive that the signal is blurry. So while measuring performance might seems like a core job function, de facto it is not. Also people that find this thread interesting should join Blind.
    - acdha 4y ago
      Would you say that software engineering and architecture aren’t core job functions because they require skills and experience to do? It’s not effortless but these people are being paid top salaries so it doesn’t seem unreasonable to expect them to have at least a rough idea of what the people who report to them are doing. This goes double for the other concerns you mentioned: if you’ve created an incentive system where people commonly BS their way into promotions, that’s a major management failure.
      - jeffdn 4y ago
        From the engineer's perspective, it's hard to take seriously a manager that is completely ignorant of any of your day-to-day work.
    - z3t4 4y ago
      > Also people that find this thread interesting should join Blind. What is "Blind" ? Is it some sort of think-tank ? If the manager has done a good job he/she has hired people that are more knowledge and experienced in their specialization fields then the manager. This is only true for "intellectual" work though, if the employees do physical work, like laying bricks, you can measure performance on how many bricks where laid. For example, one employee might have spent 3 weeks carefully reading code to find a bug. Not a single code push for a whole month. And might not even have found the bug. But likely found lots of unused code that everyone been too scared to touch. So if you're measuring performance by LOC written, that person could end up on the nagive.
      - lanstin 4y ago
        Blind is an app that has people with confirmed company affiliations but anonymous, if you trust them. People speak openly if very greedily about wrk place shenanigans. It seems like an informative if distorting and addictive sort of thing. I check it every few months or if there is something big going on, e.g. layoffs or whatever. There are sections only your company can see and then more shared areas where you can read the woes of a PIP at Amazon or the rest and festers at Google, etc.
codefreeordie 4y ago
"Rest and vest" is a phrase that gets bandied about often -- including by people who are trying to do it. I couldn't tell you what fraction of employees, but there are folks hiding in all of the big tech companies that are happy with their comp, aren't trying to advance, and have adopted the "do the minimum to not get fired" approach to their work. If too many of these get together in one org or on one team, the whole thing gets poisoned and everyone starts barely getting anything done.
- BobbyJo 4y ago
  My experience at Google (which matched other large companies I've been at) was more that the "smartest" (I.E. earliest) members of a team laid down so many road blocks for later members, in the form of tech-debt and undocumented knowledge, that the output difference between coasting and working yourself to death was pretty small. It's an easy environment to get discouraged in.
  - powerhour 4y ago
    My fear is that is what I'm doing right now. I've been writing code alone for a while, it's very possible it will be hard for new hires to understand or update. I know there is tech debt but I don't have time to fix it (because I'm alone, natch). Oh well. Maybe they can spend their time replacing my work.
    - Spoom 4y ago
      No worries, inevitably whatever framework you're using right now will be deprecated and replaced within a few years anyway.
  - hot_gril 4y ago
    My experience at Google was that until I decided the company was kinda directionless and started selectively ignoring leadership to get stuff done. Of course avoiding the "insubordination" line. Turns out they're still happy as long as you give them what they want in the end, or if not, what their boss wants. And I'm happy to see things work.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bluedino 4y ago
“Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here,” Zuckerberg said on the call, according to a Reuters report. “And part of my hope by raising expectations and having more aggressive goals, and just kind of turning up the heat a little bit, is that I think some of you might just say that this place isn’t for you. And that self-selection is okay with me.”
dam_broke_it 4y ago
> Corporate House Cleaning/Reduction In Force scenario HP did this back in 2013; be in the office or resign.
- sbierwagen 4y ago
  And it made HP the dynamic, fast growing company it is today.
dividefuel 4y ago
For companies that adjust salary for remote workers, those employees who moved to Cheap Town are now cheaper for the company to pay than those who work in Silicon Valley.
- creativemonkeys 4y ago
  Last time I checked how much I'd lose, it was between 10k and 15k, which is not much compared to my total comp.
- hot_gril 4y ago
  But do they adjust down to market rate? Hard to tell if they aren't hiring new people in Cheap Town.

fred_is_fred 4y ago

"I suspect and from what I've seen the majority of people simply cant handle the responsibility/self management of working remote." While this may be true, if this has to be solved by forcing everyone to move to SF/NY - then couldn't you just save more money by firing their managers?

acdha 4y ago
Exactly. You can’t make this claim without saying that your managers are incompetent all the way up to the C level because it means nobody was measuring performance even though that’s a core job requirement.
- lanstin 4y ago
  It is extremely rare for management, especially higher levels, to have any method of distinguishing smart and hard working people from duffers or from “managing upwards” big talkers. Git logs sort of help much interpretation is so context sensitive that the signal is blurry. So while measuring performance might seems like a core job function, de facto it is not. Also people that find this thread interesting should join Blind.
  - acdha 4y ago
    Would you say that software engineering and architecture aren’t core job functions because they require skills and experience to do? It’s not effortless but these people are being paid top salaries so it doesn’t seem unreasonable to expect them to have at least a rough idea of what the people who report to them are doing. This goes double for the other concerns you mentioned: if you’ve created an incentive system where people commonly BS their way into promotions, that’s a major management failure.
    - jeffdn 4y ago
      From the engineer's perspective, it's hard to take seriously a manager that is completely ignorant of any of your day-to-day work.
  - z3t4 4y ago
    > Also people that find this thread interesting should join Blind. What is "Blind" ? Is it some sort of think-tank ? If the manager has done a good job he/she has hired people that are more knowledge and experienced in their specialization fields then the manager. This is only true for "intellectual" work though, if the employees do physical work, like laying bricks, you can measure performance on how many bricks where laid. For example, one employee might have spent 3 weeks carefully reading code to find a bug. Not a single code push for a whole month. And might not even have found the bug. But likely found lots of unused code that everyone been too scared to touch. So if you're measuring performance by LOC written, that person could end up on the nagive.
    - lanstin 4y ago
      Blind is an app that has people with confirmed company affiliations but anonymous, if you trust them. People speak openly if very greedily about wrk place shenanigans. It seems like an informative if distorting and addictive sort of thing. I check it every few months or if there is something big going on, e.g. layoffs or whatever. There are sections only your company can see and then more shared areas where you can read the woes of a PIP at Amazon or the rest and festers at Google, etc.

codefreeordie 4y ago

"Rest and vest" is a phrase that gets bandied about often -- including by people who are trying to do it. I couldn't tell you what fraction of employees, but there are folks hiding in all of the big tech companies that are happy with their comp, aren't trying to advance, and have adopted the "do the minimum to not get fired" approach to their work. If too many of these get together in one org or on one team, the whole thing gets poisoned and everyone starts barely getting anything done.

BobbyJo 4y ago
My experience at Google (which matched other large companies I've been at) was more that the "smartest" (I.E. earliest) members of a team laid down so many road blocks for later members, in the form of tech-debt and undocumented knowledge, that the output difference between coasting and working yourself to death was pretty small. It's an easy environment to get discouraged in.
- powerhour 4y ago
  My fear is that is what I'm doing right now. I've been writing code alone for a while, it's very possible it will be hard for new hires to understand or update. I know there is tech debt but I don't have time to fix it (because I'm alone, natch). Oh well. Maybe they can spend their time replacing my work.
  - Spoom 4y ago
    No worries, inevitably whatever framework you're using right now will be deprecated and replaced within a few years anyway.
- hot_gril 4y ago
  My experience at Google was that until I decided the company was kinda directionless and started selectively ignoring leadership to get stuff done. Of course avoiding the "insubordination" line. Turns out they're still happy as long as you give them what they want in the end, or if not, what their boss wants. And I'm happy to see things work.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

bluedino 4y ago

“Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here,” Zuckerberg said on the call, according to a Reuters report. “And part of my hope by raising expectations and having more aggressive goals, and just kind of turning up the heat a little bit, is that I think some of you might just say that this place isn’t for you. And that self-selection is okay with me.”

dam_broke_it 4y ago

> Corporate House Cleaning/Reduction In Force scenario HP did this back in 2013; be in the office or resign.

sbierwagen 4y ago
And it made HP the dynamic, fast growing company it is today.

dividefuel 4y ago

For companies that adjust salary for remote workers, those employees who moved to Cheap Town are now cheaper for the company to pay than those who work in Silicon Valley.

creativemonkeys 4y ago
Last time I checked how much I'd lose, it was between 10k and 15k, which is not much compared to my total comp.
hot_gril 4y ago
But do they adjust down to market rate? Hard to tell if they aren't hiring new people in Cheap Town.