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Meta stops offering remote work in new job postings
- hot_gril 4y agoPaywall blocking the article for me, but... I considered changing jobs to FB about a year ago. The recruiter was saying that they're remote-first and plan to stay that way.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y agoWell, a year ago they were also hiring. It's entirely possible that plans changed.
- hot_gril 4y agoRemote work was supposed to be part of the long-term vision straight from the CEO, tied together with the Metaverse stuff. Said the recruiter. Other companies said much vaguer things. I'd expect recruiters saying they support WFH without mentioning the risk of that going away, but Facebook recruiting was making bolder claims (which ofc I took with a grain of salt). Maybe this means the Metaverse is being abandoned.
- briga 4y agoRecruiters are there to get you hired, not to tell the truth. I imagine the messaging internally for recruiting teams has changed drastically. Is there anyone who still wants to work at facebook at this point? The company that is laying off thousands, that has wasted billions on a metaverse that no one wants, not to mention one that has helped rip apart the fabric of society? And now doesn’t want you working from home? Is it really worth the money at this point?
- turdprincess 4y agoAs long as they pay top dollar, many people would. For many, works is not a question of morals, principles, or company values. It's a question of collecting tokens into their bank account at the highest velocity possible. Meta is still one of the top payers in the market, so people will keep lining up to work there.
- hot_gril 4y agoWasn't about money for me
- btgeekboy 4y agoI doubt the recruiter would have known anything different. A lot of these sudden RTO initiatives appear to be top-down things, not something recruiters would have known about a year in advance.
- prima-facie 4y agoSuddenly all these layoffs from the tech industry now make sense. Companies view the WFH movement and the rights which the workers have gained over the past three years as a threat to their very existence. The layoffs combined with a mandatory return to office will discourage any sort of dissent.
- next_xibalba 4y agoTo what "rights", specifically, are you referring? How were they "gained over the past 3 years"? There is a weird strain of thinking in this thread that tries to frame this as some kind of Marxian labor-capital power struggle. But that framing doesn't really fit the facts.
- prima-facie 4y agoMaybe rights is the wrong word. 'Leverage' is what I meant.
- hot_gril 4y agoMight makes right ;)
- slowmotiony 4y agoDo they though? I see the WFH movement as a threat to the existence of my job. If the entire IT department works from home, what's stopping the company from moving it to India, Bangladesh or Pakistan? If you live in North America or Europe then I feel like you should fight against WFH, since a lot of smart people in the world would gladly do your job for half the salary.
- epups 4y agoIf that was true, why don't Meta and all the others simply hire people from those countries, like they offshored production? In some cases they even set up physical offices there to try to do exactly as you say. Yet they keep coming back to more expensive workers.
- arthurcolle 4y ago"Meta is confused! It hurt itself in its confusion!"
- temp_account_32 4y agohttps://archive.is/vK1H9 https://archive.is/vK1H9
- blibble 4y ago> Mark Zuckerberg pushes the benefits of coming to the office has he stopped believing in the transformative power of the metaverse then?
- sp332 4y agoHe lives in Hawaii lol
- jfghi 4y agoI thought he transcended meatspace /s
- Cal___ 4y agoNo, he just moves in and out of it like Neo.
- next_xibalba 4y agoAs I understand it, he hydrofoils over to the SF office 3 days/week. #DisruptByExample
- nh23423fefe 4y agoWhy lie? 3700 km / 80 kph > 50h one way You understand he spends 100h commuting every week?
- rainytuesday 4y agoAs an AI language model, I do not have the ability to determine the tone or intent behind the comment without additional context. However, based on the information presented in the comment, it is possible that it could be intended as a joke or a sarcastic remark, as traveling by hydrofoil from Hawaii to San Francisco three days a week would be a highly impractical and unlikely mode of transportation. It is also worth noting that there is no public record of Mark Zuckerberg regularly commuting from Hawaii to San Francisco using a hydrofoil or any other mode of transportation.
- mandeepj 4y agoZuck in 2020: “FB going to be the most forward-leaning company on remote work at our scale” https://www.protocol.com/mark-zuckerberg-remote-work-facebook https://www.protocol.com/mark-zuckerberg-remote-work-faceboo...
- dalyons 4y agoi really wish we could see some of the data that has made him change his mind so drastically.
- toomuchtodo 4y agoThe power dynamic does not require evidence, hence it being the root cause requiring a fix.
- dalyons 4y agoi know that's the generic thing to say, and its not untrue. But in this specific case i am curious what went into this decision, as I still have some small respect for the builder focused culture he created at FB for at least the first ~half of its life.
- mandeepj 4y ago> builder focused culture he created at FB for at least the first ~half of its life I loved that phase as well. Their culture changed drastically post 2016 elections and they grew too fast and too broad during Covid.
- next_xibalba 4y agoAncedotally, someone close to me who works at Meta has cited several outrageous examples of WLB'ers doing almost no work. Perhaps a few bad apples spoiled the bunch.
- prh8 4y ago
- ErneX 4y agoWork on the metaverse but in-person.
- dv_dt 4y agoCome work in the office meatspace on the metaverse
- paxys 4y agoMetaverse for thee but not for me
- la64710 4y agoGreat job humans. Keep encouraging more daily commuters and contributing to greenhouse gases instead of making things better through technology. I am sure the next generations will thank us for this and not even showing the willpower to look at the issue objectively. /s
- add-sub-mul-div 4y agoBefore the pandemic I never touched my car Monday to Friday, I was strictly on the subway. I didn't even have a parking pass for work. Since working from home, I drive around the suburbs almost daily Monday to Friday for lunch/errands to get out of the house. People make weird assumptions.
- la64710 3y agoThe only thing I am assuming is that back to the office will increase number of car commuters - are you saying this is a weird assumption? I think it is a no brainer.
- adversaryIdiot 4y agoIt sounds like you may live in one of the few cities in America with public transportation
- Gigachad 3y agoOffice commuting is the most viable public transport service. Trains would use a negligible amount of power per passenger. It might even be more efficient to take a train to an office than to heat your home.
- basisword 4y agoI think companies are trying to use the current economic environment as leverage to claw back some rights their workers have gained since 2020. It’s all about control, nothing to do with your output as an employee.
- next_xibalba 4y agoThis is kind of an odd way to frame this. The increase of remote work, at Meta at least, was not a result of some kind of workers vs. management struggle in which workers temporarily gained an upper hand. It was the result of an exogenous event (the pandemic) forcing an on-the-fly experiment.
- SamReidHughes 4y agoIf anything, companies would favor remote work because it allows them to undercut the pay required for local talent.
- basisword 4y agoIt was forced by the pandemic. Workers had to stay home, as required by governments, and companies had no choice but to adapt. In that time workers gained a right that only a small number of them could convince employers to give them before. It’s got to the point where a large number of people would quit their job rather than work in an office and now that that’s a risky proposition, companies can take the opportunity to remove that right from workers with less risk they’ll quit.
- next_xibalba 4y agoYour use of the word "right" is pretty far afield of how most people (lawyers, in particular) would use it. What you're describing is better described as an "emergency measure", "benefit", or "privilege".
- Overtonwindow 4y agoWFH may very well be a trap for companies to identify their "least loyal" employees. I've heard in business that if you're not at the table you're not involved. I can see a future where the same will be said about WFH: If you're not at the office you're not involved, a team player, or someone to keep.
- notagoodidea 4y agoWhy in the future? It is already the case in a lot of companies that are not able to make WFH and office work in parallel, especially on the information sharing, on the spot decision making and so on. My personal biais says that most companies actually failed to transform to viable remote-oriented companies and are not ready to remove the bandaid and bring everyone back to the office.
- surgical_fire 4y agoSo what? Job hopping has been the norm for so long. I don't want to be kept. Even if they wanted to keep me, they most likely wouldn't make it anyway.
- ThorsBane 4y agoMeta needs its best engineers to be highly motivated in uncertain times. Otherwise innovation will be harder to come by. All the best engineers I ever worked with so far all favor remote work because it increases code quality, throughput, and happiness. Meta will be disrupted, seeing as whatever Meta tech they’re building isn’t even good enough for their own employees to dogfood for better remote work experience.
- sumo89 4y agoThe place I work for hasn't fully embraced remote for in house staff, since lockdowns it's now 2 days a month in the office but we have hired an agency to help with an app rebuild. We've got 5-6 people from the agency working from Spain, Hungary, Poland and the UK and they're brilliant. Really knowledgable about our specific niche with loads of experience in related areas. I have no idea how we'd find people this good in the UK let alone ones tied to commute distance of the office. I can only assume the huge companies like Meta are wanting to reduce HR overhead of dealing with different countries and states employment laws, taxes etc.
- renewiltord 4y agoLarger companies have economies of scale that enable dealing with these laws easier. Smaller companies have to use something like Deel. That hypothesis doesn't sound that convincing - especially since multiple Americans I know who wanted to join big companies pre-pandemic did so because of the access to living in different places outside of America.
- SkyPuncher 4y agoI'm a big advocate of remote work, but my role has changed it's value significantly: * As an IC, remote is amazing. It gives me distraction free space to focus and be productive. With moderate process, I'm able to be extremely productive and unblock myself. * As a manager, remote can be challenging when trying to drive cross-team/cross-org impact - especially on ambiguous projects. It's far more challenging to drive outcomes when you can't simply walk into someone's office for a quick conversation . Good process can help with this, but most companies don't reward for this.
- bratao 4y agoWhile it may be controversial, I like that some companies are trying Work from Office, for multiple reasons: It forces companies to tap into a smaller talent pool locally, which can include more junior employees that may require training. This makes the company more inclusive and gives opportunities to those who might not otherwise have access to them. Let's not forget that one of the most successful companies in the world, OpenAI, operates mostly from the office. For one, if there truly is an advantage to remote work, then companies that embrace it will naturally outperform those that don't. However, the fact that Meta and other companies are requiring employees to return to the office suggests that there may be benefits to in-person work that can't be replicated remotely. My company choose an hybrid option that I find interesting. It is remotely only, but hires only locally.
- danpalmer 4y ago> My company choose an hybrid option that I find interesting. It is remotely only, but hires only locally. Oh, the worst of both worlds. The talent pool of one city and reasonable commutes, combined with the great communication and innovation of video calls looking up someone's nose.
- albatross13 4y agoI truly appreciate the negative climate impacts of Work from Office, the faster we can accelerate global climate change the better!
- birdsnezte 4y ago>> one of the most successful companies in the world, OpenAI How are you measuring success?
- Gigachad 3y agoChatGPT is the fastest growing consumer product ever created, by a large margin. That’s pretty successful.
- UncleEntity 4y ago> It forces companies to tap into a smaller talent pool locally… But this is meta we’re talking about who are deeply embedded in the one place on earth every software developer wants to go to get the best job opportunities. They might deny it on “moral grounds” but, yeah…
- psychphysic 4y agoI don't blame them. Were entering a bear market, they have disadvantaged themselves with metaverse (although their hand was forced when ad market was nuked). It's a hectic market where job seekers and employers are about to get tight.
- albatross13 4y agoYou'd think then, entering a bear market, you'd want to keep your best people happy by letting them WFH. But maybe they're going the HPE route and trying to cut staff via attrition. When I was at HP in 2014, Meg closed all satellite offices and got rid of most WFH- this lead to overly cramped offices as an abundance of employees were dragged back in. A lot of employees quit or simply took early retirement as a result.
- psychphysic 4y agoThese are new jobs. My pet theory is that meta is a business with no product or purpose at the moment. Once they know what they want to do to remain a business they will hire good people for that new product. I suspect though that "good people" for someone like Meta are usually head hunted and will be offered bespoke contracts from day 1. All tinfoil hat speculation on my part to be honest.
- albatross13 4y agoI follow, that makes sense.
- ilrwbwrkhv 4y agoAs I had written a long time back as Facebook slowly dies, we will see the monster thrashing and causing destruction in its wake. Trying to lobby for banning TikTok, getting rid of remote, they will try everything now. The metaverse idea failed and now they are completely lost.
- mrweasel 4y agoArguably I'm not quite done mulling over this, but I've started to wonder if the insistence that work-from-home isn't working, isn't an indication of failed management. While software developers and similar roles have rather easily adapted to working from home, some managers haven't been able to keep up. I suspect this is because many of them weren't great manager to begin with. They struggle to do project planing, follow ups on current tasks and keeping the job queues full. Forcing people back into the office is an attempt to revert to an environment that hides poor management skills, even if it's worse for everyone else. The success of "work from home" seems to me to be very much dependent on the management and culture of a company and Facebook may simply not have a management layer that can deal with developers not being at the office or working at odd hours.
- chris_wot 4y agoI really wonder when Meta will fail. I stopped using Facebook over a year ago (still use Messenger).
- adversaryIdiot 4y agoThis goes to show that it doesn't take talent to be one of the worlds richest. It just takes luck. And Zuck has run away from what made him so lucky. He will fall.
- jchonphoenix 4y agoThis isn't as nefarious as everyone makes it out to be. There are articles that state Meta has hard data that people who start as Remote workers at Meta significantly underperform those that don't. In light of that data, they're pausing the experiment and working to understand what the data is saying.
- drewbug01 4y agoIf their data is solid enough to justify it, they should publish it. Until they do so, I remain deeply skeptical. It’s all too easy to engineer measurements or interpret data to support the outcomes you already want. If the data is truly so revealing, show it to the world.
- jchonphoenix 3y agoI'd love to see it too, but don't you think the sentiment is a little entitled? Meta is a private company that can do whatever it wants and Zuck doesn't need to justify anything. He's also not being too egregious here. He's stopped hiring new remote, but hasn't forced any current remote people back into the office. What right do we have to demand more from them?
- drewbug01 3y agoI’m free to demand whatever I’d like, and they’re free to ignore my demands. “Entitled” is an odd way to frame the interaction to me.