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> Our early analysis of performance data suggests that engineers who either joined Meta in-person and then transferred to remote or remained in-person performed

> Our early analysis of performance data suggests that engineers who either joined Meta in-person and then transferred to remote or remained in-person performed better on average than people who joined remotely. This analysis also shows that engineers earlier in their career perform better on average when they work in-person with teammates at least three days a week. This requires further study, but our hypothesis is that it is still easier to build trust in person and that those relationships help us work more effectively.

agos 4y ago
I'm very curious as to what constitutes "performing better" in the context of this metric
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  Selling more ads
zpeti 4y ago
I wonder if the eventual result of all this work from home debate will be that it's something that's earned after a period of time. e.g. 1 day a week after 6 months of employment, 2 from 1 year, etc. That actually makes perfect sense to me from a practical perspective.
- callahad 4y ago
  Gradual phase-in makes sense to me, too, but who's going to be in the office to mentor those folks?
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  More likely based on level than tenure
- wootland 4y ago
  It doesn't make sense because the biggest advantage to WFH is that people can live in a lower cost of living city (and companies can hire the best talent globally). Forcing people into the office even once a month means you're tied to the real estate market next to the office.
concordDance 4y ago
Matches my experience.
myth_drannon 4y ago
Juniors and interns really strugle in a remote environment. Since Meta was hiring mostly new grads or junior leetcoders it makes sense that remote work culture at Meta hit some bumps.
- lopkeny12ko 4y ago
  You cannot blame company policies for the poor performance or low motivation of individual junior developers. My team has hired multiple junior developers in the last 2 years, all of whom are 100% remote, and they've been doing excellent.
  - myth_drannon 4y ago
    Right, and it's up to the team to go above and beyond to help them. Managers and senior devs need to step up and get involved more with mentoring and helping.In the office you can gage stress levels of someone who is stuck,lost and not asking for help. In remote they will just hunker down and work nights to try to push through, it happens more to junior than to senior (usually).
  - bproven 4y ago
    yep - it is the culture that determines this. Ive worked at full remote companies that took time to mentor juniors and it worked fine
  - karmelapple 4y ago
    +1 to this. Our small company hired our first full-time junior dev last year. They’ve been a fantastic addition to the team. We have also been doing 100% remote for over a decade, so our existing processes helped I imagine, too. But I’ve got another data point that a junior dev can certainly thrive doing 100% remote work.
  - zeroonetwothree 4y ago
    I’m going to trust Meta’s sample size of probably thousands over your sample size of “multiple”. I had six juniors join my team remotely and three are amazing, two are ok (do useful work but need handholding), but one is pretty bad. However I don’t know how that compares to non-remote hires so it could be that it’s worse.
laweijfmvo 4y ago
Or maybe they lowered their hiring bar over the last few years, when employees had no choice to be in-office...
lapcat 4y ago
I wonder how that analysis takes into account the general craziness and stressfulness of the pandemic, which was the cause of many employees joining Meta remotely? Not to mention, Meta did a crazy total amount of hiring during the pandemic, ramped up very quickly, which by itself can lead to inefficiency.
wootland 4y ago
> our hypothesis is that it is still easier to build trust in person Nothing builds trust like callously laying off tens of thousands of people over multiple rounds of layoffs! Want a trustworthy environment? Earn it. Really though when he says "build trust" what he means is that he (Zuck) does not trust his employees unless he can see them.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  > he (Zuck) does not trust his employees unless he can see them. You know that's not true. Facebook has offices around the world. No single person can "see" 80,000 people in any meaningful way.
  - wootland 4y ago
    His ideology and distrust is propagated down the managerial ranks. It's an entire culture built on distrust and exploitation.
ASinclair 4y ago
> This requires further study, but our hypothesis is that it is still easier to build trust in person I chuckled a bit. This is coming from a Social Media Company whose product is about connecting online. What does it say about the trust between users of its platforms?
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  Originally Facebook was all about only connecting with people you already know. So it’s not as ironic as you are suggesting.
- jayd16 4y ago
  Well I mean, the simple explanation is online is still far better than nothing. I'm not sure anyone is expecting you to read someone's wall if you could just talk to them every day.
  - enumjorge 4y ago
    But given the choice, why would a company invest in VR headsets as a way to collaborate remotely if the company selling them thinks in-person is better?
    - el_cujo 4y ago
      I don't think those ideas necessarily contradict. If you're using VR to collaborate with someone on the other side of the country (or world) but you only need to collaborate intermittently, then remote collaboration just has to be "good enough" to offset the cost of travel even if in person would be ideal. Meanwhile, for their own employees who may need to collaborate daily, from their point of view they might think in that case it makes more sense to enforce in-person. I doubt Meta's stated goal (at this point) with their VR stuff is that you should never ever leave your house because VR is just as good, seems like it's more "this thing enables remote to be better".
    - kapp_in_life 4y ago
      It can be that in-person is best, but isn't always possible. And then it can also be the case that VR is better than connecting over Web/Mobile, while also being far cheaper than a plane ticket.
paxys 4y ago
To me this sounds more like – engineers who have been at Meta < 3 years (so were hired remote) are performing worse than those who have worked there longer. Which...doesn't sound that crazy and doesn't have to be related to remote vs in-person at all. Of course your tenured employees are better at their jobs.
- oofta-boofta 4y ago
  This was the most obtuse portion of the entire diatribe, and further cements my rather low opinion of Meta leadership; they have all the data in the world, but have no idea how to make proper conclusions from it.
- alfalfasprout 4y ago
  Anecdotally... GOOG/Meta haven't updated their interview process significantly and it now just screens for quantity of leetcode grinded. This is likely a poor signal for actual engineering competence.
guywithahat 4y ago
The irony is they’re tip-toeing around this but it’s been known remote workers don’t perform as well for as long as I’ve been in the industry. There’s a reason CEO’s will often come in touting how they’re going to promote wfh and then back off once they see the performance metrics their policy creates
- strus 4y ago
  > it’s been known remote workers don’t perform as well for as long as I’ve been in the industry I've worked in the industry for 10 years now, and I don't agree "it's been known". Any measurable source of such claims?
- wootland 4y ago
  > it’s been known remote workers don’t perform as well for as long as I’ve been in the industry. It most certainly is not "known". I've managed remote teams, I've managed in-office teams and I've managed the same people in both scenarios. At no time was the office advantageous to innovation. Quite the opposite, it's a soul suck and once you free people to work how they are comfortable, their creativity will skyrocket.
- EMM_386 4y ago
  I'm 2 decades into this career with the last 10 being remote, and I am as productive as I was in the office. It certainly takes discipline but I treat working from home the same as if I was in an office. I am at my desk during business hours. People can Slack me, email me, call me on Teams, whatever. Besides, everything is logged. Every line of code, pull request, login time, email sent, all of it. They know what I'm up to.
dongobread 4y ago
It does not surprise me at all that performance ratings are correlated with office presence, but not for the reasons they imply. The performance evaluation system at Meta is heavily biased towards political visibility and grandstanding and these are simply much easier to achieve in a physical workplace.

agos 4y ago

I'm very curious as to what constitutes "performing better" in the context of this metric

zeroonetwothree 4y ago
Selling more ads

zpeti 4y ago

I wonder if the eventual result of all this work from home debate will be that it's something that's earned after a period of time. e.g. 1 day a week after 6 months of employment, 2 from 1 year, etc. That actually makes perfect sense to me from a practical perspective.

callahad 4y ago
Gradual phase-in makes sense to me, too, but who's going to be in the office to mentor those folks?
zeroonetwothree 4y ago
More likely based on level than tenure
wootland 4y ago
It doesn't make sense because the biggest advantage to WFH is that people can live in a lower cost of living city (and companies can hire the best talent globally). Forcing people into the office even once a month means you're tied to the real estate market next to the office.

concordDance 4y ago

Matches my experience.

myth_drannon 4y ago

Juniors and interns really strugle in a remote environment. Since Meta was hiring mostly new grads or junior leetcoders it makes sense that remote work culture at Meta hit some bumps.

lopkeny12ko 4y ago
You cannot blame company policies for the poor performance or low motivation of individual junior developers. My team has hired multiple junior developers in the last 2 years, all of whom are 100% remote, and they've been doing excellent.
- myth_drannon 4y ago
  Right, and it's up to the team to go above and beyond to help them. Managers and senior devs need to step up and get involved more with mentoring and helping.In the office you can gage stress levels of someone who is stuck,lost and not asking for help. In remote they will just hunker down and work nights to try to push through, it happens more to junior than to senior (usually).
- bproven 4y ago
  yep - it is the culture that determines this. Ive worked at full remote companies that took time to mentor juniors and it worked fine
- karmelapple 4y ago
  +1 to this. Our small company hired our first full-time junior dev last year. They’ve been a fantastic addition to the team. We have also been doing 100% remote for over a decade, so our existing processes helped I imagine, too. But I’ve got another data point that a junior dev can certainly thrive doing 100% remote work.
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  I’m going to trust Meta’s sample size of probably thousands over your sample size of “multiple”. I had six juniors join my team remotely and three are amazing, two are ok (do useful work but need handholding), but one is pretty bad. However I don’t know how that compares to non-remote hires so it could be that it’s worse.

laweijfmvo 4y ago

Or maybe they lowered their hiring bar over the last few years, when employees had no choice to be in-office...

lapcat 4y ago

I wonder how that analysis takes into account the general craziness and stressfulness of the pandemic, which was the cause of many employees joining Meta remotely? Not to mention, Meta did a crazy total amount of hiring during the pandemic, ramped up very quickly, which by itself can lead to inefficiency.

wootland 4y ago

> our hypothesis is that it is still easier to build trust in person Nothing builds trust like callously laying off tens of thousands of people over multiple rounds of layoffs! Want a trustworthy environment? Earn it. Really though when he says "build trust" what he means is that he (Zuck) does not trust his employees unless he can see them.

andsoitis 4y ago
> he (Zuck) does not trust his employees unless he can see them. You know that's not true. Facebook has offices around the world. No single person can "see" 80,000 people in any meaningful way.
- wootland 4y ago
  His ideology and distrust is propagated down the managerial ranks. It's an entire culture built on distrust and exploitation.

ASinclair 4y ago

> This requires further study, but our hypothesis is that it is still easier to build trust in person I chuckled a bit. This is coming from a Social Media Company whose product is about connecting online. What does it say about the trust between users of its platforms?

zeroonetwothree 4y ago
Originally Facebook was all about only connecting with people you already know. So it’s not as ironic as you are suggesting.
jayd16 4y ago
Well I mean, the simple explanation is online is still far better than nothing. I'm not sure anyone is expecting you to read someone's wall if you could just talk to them every day.
- enumjorge 4y ago
  But given the choice, why would a company invest in VR headsets as a way to collaborate remotely if the company selling them thinks in-person is better?
  - el_cujo 4y ago
    I don't think those ideas necessarily contradict. If you're using VR to collaborate with someone on the other side of the country (or world) but you only need to collaborate intermittently, then remote collaboration just has to be "good enough" to offset the cost of travel even if in person would be ideal. Meanwhile, for their own employees who may need to collaborate daily, from their point of view they might think in that case it makes more sense to enforce in-person. I doubt Meta's stated goal (at this point) with their VR stuff is that you should never ever leave your house because VR is just as good, seems like it's more "this thing enables remote to be better".
  - kapp_in_life 4y ago
    It can be that in-person is best, but isn't always possible. And then it can also be the case that VR is better than connecting over Web/Mobile, while also being far cheaper than a plane ticket.

paxys 4y ago

To me this sounds more like – engineers who have been at Meta < 3 years (so were hired remote) are performing worse than those who have worked there longer. Which...doesn't sound that crazy and doesn't have to be related to remote vs in-person at all. Of course your tenured employees are better at their jobs.

oofta-boofta 4y ago
This was the most obtuse portion of the entire diatribe, and further cements my rather low opinion of Meta leadership; they have all the data in the world, but have no idea how to make proper conclusions from it.
alfalfasprout 4y ago
Anecdotally... GOOG/Meta haven't updated their interview process significantly and it now just screens for quantity of leetcode grinded. This is likely a poor signal for actual engineering competence.

guywithahat 4y ago

The irony is they’re tip-toeing around this but it’s been known remote workers don’t perform as well for as long as I’ve been in the industry. There’s a reason CEO’s will often come in touting how they’re going to promote wfh and then back off once they see the performance metrics their policy creates

strus 4y ago
> it’s been known remote workers don’t perform as well for as long as I’ve been in the industry I've worked in the industry for 10 years now, and I don't agree "it's been known". Any measurable source of such claims?
wootland 4y ago
> it’s been known remote workers don’t perform as well for as long as I’ve been in the industry. It most certainly is not "known". I've managed remote teams, I've managed in-office teams and I've managed the same people in both scenarios. At no time was the office advantageous to innovation. Quite the opposite, it's a soul suck and once you free people to work how they are comfortable, their creativity will skyrocket.
EMM_386 4y ago
I'm 2 decades into this career with the last 10 being remote, and I am as productive as I was in the office. It certainly takes discipline but I treat working from home the same as if I was in an office. I am at my desk during business hours. People can Slack me, email me, call me on Teams, whatever. Besides, everything is logged. Every line of code, pull request, login time, email sent, all of it. They know what I'm up to.

dongobread 4y ago

It does not surprise me at all that performance ratings are correlated with office presence, but not for the reasons they imply. The performance evaluation system at Meta is heavily biased towards political visibility and grandstanding and these are simply much easier to achieve in a physical workplace.