10 ms·

Meta's Mandatory Return to Office Is 'A Mess'

118 points by helsinkiandrew 3y ago

helsinkiandrew 3y ago
https://archive.ph/5bvCk https://archive.ph/5bvCk
- mikae1 3y ago
  https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clea...
- ninjakeyboard 3y ago
  https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome <- this one for chrome
MattGaiser 3y ago
> Until OKd, office work is required, even when teams are elsewhere. This is the one I find baffling about RTO. I know plenty of people who have been dragged into offices where they have no team members. So they are just on Zoom at a desk in the office rather than at home. I know of one guy where the company set up a local office for him and another person (who is not on his team), so they could be the two people in their office in their city. I did it for the last few days of my prior job. Was dragged into the office when all my co-workers were at least 3.5 hours away. Even if all the supposed benefits of in person are accepted at face value, none of that allows for them.
- orra 3y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if it's just an excuse to fire people for not complying. Which then isn't baffling, just cynical and cruel.
osti 3y ago
Can we ban those blogspam sites such as business insider?
- mvdtnz 3y ago
  The rest of us are here to discuss it. If you don't want to, jog on. Don't tell us we can't.
  - smeagull 3y ago
    Nobody can read the article. Posting it here was a waste of time.
    - greenyoda 3y ago
      Someone has already posted an archive link that allows non-subscribers to read the article. See this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37748603 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37748603 And if archive.ph doesn't work with your DNS, try this one: http://web.archive.org/web/20231003073031/https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-rto-mess-return-to-office-remote-work-2023-9 http://web.archive.org/web/20231003073031/https://www.busine... You could have created either of these links yourself in the time it took to post your comment (just go to archive.ph or web.archive.org and paste in the original URL).
bagels 3y ago
It was already hard to find a conference room sometimes there on a day when only 10% showed up. I can only imagine how bad it is now that people are there 50% and needing to VC with the other 50% that are home or in another office that day.
- ricardobeat 3y ago
  I'm pretty sure the VC acronym is already taken, especially on this forum :)
  - bagels 3y ago
    I think it was clear from context. I could have said Rooms and nobody would know what I was talking about.
david_draco 3y ago
Has anyone actually been fired for not returning to office, after applying for home office, or is this only a threat?
- rwmj 3y ago
  People don't want to test this out, given that the job market is difficult at the moment. It does hint at the real, unstated reason for all this which is to try to get the headcount down. They are massively overstaffed and losing money on nonsense like the metaverse. I'm wondering if there are Meta employees on remote work contracts. The contract at the company I work for specifies that I work remotely, and no one can change that without offering me some quid pro quo (which of course I would never take).
- Tempest1981 3y ago
  I assume they'll first be ranked as "lower performers", then maybe fired in 1-2 years, or during the next downsizing. > the continued mandate that team leaders decide that 14.5% to 16.5% of their workers are in the lower performance categories
- somsak2 3y ago
  if my company asks me to come back, this will be my approach. I'll keep doing what I've been doing remotely and if they want to fire me, fine
KaiserPro 3y ago
Hotdesking can be so utterly impersonal it makes a mockery of RTO. The point of RTO is that you are surrounded by colleagues in your team so that you can spontaneously collaborate. It sounds like its just a meat market and everyone is jammed together regardless of team or affiliation. hotdesking only really works for a small number of situations, and even then, it needs careful planning and thought. You need permanent lockers so that you have somewhere to stash your shit. the equipment needs to be all the same class(to avoid "I want this one") and _higher_ quality than non-hotdesk. Repairs need to be proactive.
- raverbashing 3y ago
  This. Pretty much all of this And a good booking system to assign people to desks "in their regions" But I guess the managers that "are worried about collaboration" didn't think of that
- carstenhag 3y ago
  (Somewhat ITish company in Germany, 250 employees) - I had to fight hard to get the company to buy seven 4K monitors (total of 2800€) and now those seats are always booked lol. At least my colleagues are a bit more productive I guess... the other desks have 1080p monitors and look terrible when connected with a Mac.
  - microtonal 3y ago
    What kind of company is that? The cost of a 4k display (and 400 Euro is pretty much bottom of the barrel when it comes to good displays) is a fraction of the yearly salary of an employee, lasts many years, and a good screen can help reducing eyesight problems. It always surprises me that companies apply austerity to weird things, like providing a setup that keeps employees healthy, while probably throwing a lot of money at irrelevant stuff.
    - dagw 3y ago
      You'd be surprised how accounting works at some companies. I've seen companies buying 10k euro civil engineering software to run on 1k euro computers that could barely handle it, and refusing to also pay to upgrade the computers.
rgblambda 3y ago
>"It seems impossible to get one desk for a long enough period," one employee said. The person noted one day having to go between hot desks at Menlo Park on different floors to get through a work day in which they'd been required to come in for meetings. So even when teams are co-located (which isn't a given), they aren't necessarily working face to face. This kind of flies in the face of the premise that RTO is needed for "collaboration". There's definitely another reason for RTO and it's not one the bosses are willing to state on the record.
- otteromkram 3y ago
  The section you quoted ends with, "for meetings." They can probably work anywhere, but need to be in the office for face-to-face meetings. Although, I'm not sure why the person would be losing their desk between meetings unless Meta had a policy for people to take their belongings with them if their going to be away from their desk for an extended period of time.
  - afiori 3y ago
    The most likely option is that the booking system allows you to book a desk for less than a full day, so late bookers might be forced into fragmented bookings.
ProxCoques 3y ago
On the meeting room thing: I worked in an office a number of years ago where the name of the person who booked the meeting (and its time/duration) was shown on a small touch screen by the door. To start the meeting, that person (or their proxy) had to swipe the screen with their badge. If the swipe had not been completed after 10mins, the room would become free and accept anyone's swipe to start that meeting. Their name would then be displayed for the same duration as the original. The kicker was that after the 10mins (and if no swipe), the system would send an email to ALL EMPLOYEES saying "Room XYZ, booked by [name of culprit], is now free". To this day I still fondly think of the genius of the person who got that system approved!
- lifeisstillgood 3y ago
  Personally the local coffee shop has always been the best meeting room. Don't have a local coffee shop? Move offices
  - c12 3y ago
    haha, many years ago when I worked in a large office the three meeting rooms where constantly busy so my team would grab a laptop and pop down the road to the pub for our meetings.
    - lifeisstillgood 3y ago
      Much harder to justify on the expenses claims report :-)
      - yieldcrv 3y ago
        these days
    - xnorswap 3y ago
      The pub lunch is the thing I miss most about my first job. Every Friday almost the entire office would decamp down to a local pub for lunch and a pint or two. The quality of the food was always very hit-or-miss (unless we went down the king's arms*, but that was seen as a bit pricey and fancy), and for many places if there were too many of us would get arsey for not booking ahead. But it was a great opportunity to just hear what everyone was up to and have a good chat in an unstructured way. I don't know if it's changing attitudes over the past 20 years, the particular companies I found myself at, the price of going to the pub, but it hasn't really been a thing at any of my places since. Now with WFH of course there is a complete absence of unstructured conversation. Every meeting has a purpose, every interaction there's something someone has in mind they want from the conversation. And while it's not impossible to chit chat still, it is impossible to overhear chit-chat, which is an underappreciated thing. Overheard conversations are a gold mine of knowledge sharing, many an interesting idea has come about because, "I couldn't help but overhear...". Now don't get me wrong, I don't want to suffer an hour long commute for that benefit, the cost-benefit skews all wrong. But I would like if everyone lived a 5 minute walk from the office. * might have been the king's head, memory plays tricks.
lnxg33k1 3y ago
A unionisation of tech workers is long overdue, we can't expect fair working conditions consistently by leaving the single randomer citizen to fight alone against multi billion companies and various interests
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >fair working conditions Ironic, considering that tech workers have by far the best working conditions of the working class.
  - lnxg33k1 3y ago
    Why is it ironic? What does you comment aim to achieve? It's a statement of a fact, are you implying that should we aim for shittier conditions for tech workers? Really sometimes I wish people would activate braincells before writing
    - beardyw 3y ago
      Ironic is not the same as wrong.
  - guntherhermann 3y ago
    I don't consider 'tech workers', working class. We're higher paid, our jobs do not destroy our bodies, in my mind it's a purely middle class career. I agree with your actual point though, we are pampered.
    - rwmj 3y ago
      Of course tech workers are working class. You either give your labour for a living or you invest capital in businesses, and almost every tech worker is doing the former. > our jobs do not destroy our bodies I've got news for you there.
      - thathndude 3y ago
rwmj 3y ago
> "We have not yet figured out hybrid work," Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, wrote on Threads. "Assigned desks mean lots of empty chairs. Hotel desks mean lots of unfamiliar faces. Pods are good for privacy but take up a ton of space. We have a lot to figure out." Yeah, maybe work all that out before you demand everyone come back to the office? Just a thought ...
- jraph 3y ago
  I had this thought reading the whole article. Surely the company has enough money to figure all this stuff out. The way things are described, it feels like the company is being incredibly disrespectful to its employees.
  - iainmerrick 3y ago
    It also seems a bit strange for the company to have an overarching goal around building a "metaverse", but not to try to figure out how they themselves might use those tools for their own work. No appetite for their own dogfood?
    - danielbln 3y ago
      Especially with the new Metaverse tech that can be seen in the Lex Fridman interview. No-one gives a damn about those weird comic avatars, but a real representation of a human including facial movements etc., that might more interesting.
      - jraph 3y ago
        > but a real representation of a human including facial movements Probably at high risk of landing in the uncanny valley, it has to be executed very well, so well I'm not sure it possible at this time.
        danielbln 3y ago
        I'd say it's past the uncanny valley overall: https://youtu.be/MVYrJJNdrEg?feature=shared&t=799 https://youtu.be/MVYrJJNdrEg?feature=shared&t=799
lifeisstillgood 3y ago
I (believe/know/research support?) that the most effective team setup is one well defined team in one single physical location, with a clear mandate (and no "management" to duck it up). Think team of great creative people working in same office, with door shut. This works for any team no matter the skill level (ie if you have so-so developers, they will perform best in these circumstances even if better developers exist.) And every step away from this a company takes the company is explicitly accepting its reduction in performance. Have people spread over different desks in same office. meh Have people spread over different offices and time zones? Have no clear mandate? Confusing requirements ? constantly changing roster of management needing different items ? In the end management has just one lever (like central banks) - how they org wise their people. It's not a hard job but to justify their own wages they have to keep fiddling. And it costs everyone
- _ph_ 3y ago
  This breaks down if you have teams in more than one location which have to interact. So yes, for smaller companies, being together at one location and reaping the benefits of direct collaboration is a thing, for international companies less so. Then there is the problem, if you do put everyone in the same room, that can be distracting too. A lot of software development requires quite time for concentration. Yes, having direct access to your team members is great, but not all the time.
  - lifeisstillgood 3y ago
    >>> This breaks down if you have teams in more than one location which have to interact. for seperate distinct teams that's fine. See conways law. but often the people are in same team across different locations - meaning their interaction is just kaput
- Lyngbakr 3y ago
  I agree, but I personally also need a couple of WFH days each week so I can be completely without distraction for tasks that require deep thought. My concentration is broken easily and I find other people talking across desks to each other or walking around in the office area distracting. When I'm WFH they simply can't distract me, as my notifications are switched off and I'm alone.
ThinkBeat 3y ago
I dont quite understand the situation. Before Covid people for the most part worked at the office? Then there was a period where people worked from home. Now they have to return to the office 3 days a week. Esp considering sold layoffs, would the amount of space availalbe now, be the same as prior to Covid? Or did Facebook hire so many people during Covid, that the layoffs were not enough to return to pre covid numbers? Or did Facebook close / sell part of their office space?
- fmajid 3y ago
  They did hire a lot during the pandemic, and have recently broken the lease on a London office with a $180M penalty or 7 years of rent (they had 18 years left).
  - ghaff 3y ago
    For all the conspiracy theorists claiming that RTO is being driven by CEOs propping up the commercial real estate investments of their buddies, anecdotally I'm seeing quite a bit of companies not renewing or even breaking leases, putting most expansion plans on hold, and either leasing much smaller dedicated spaces or even just making co-working arrangements.
    - fmajid 3y ago
      That is indeed a bizarre theory. No amount of kudos from golfing buddies is going to make up for the raises they could have given themselves for cutting office costs. One thing I expect to happen is companies will install more one-person soundproofed cubbies for salespeople to make calls without disturbing the entire floor, or people to have videoconferences. What I would love to see is now that offices are less loaded, have more individual offices where people can concentrate and work rather than open-plan layouts that were really introduced because they are space-efficient, mealy-mouthed rationalizations about collaboration notwitstanding.
- bluescrn 3y ago
  Covid fizzled out, then we were told we were amidst an imminent climate apocalypse. Good time to make that end to unnecessary commuting permanent, right? Didn't last long, did it?
rtpg 3y ago
> "It's a mess," one current employee said of Meta's RTO so far. "And all of this because it's difficult to remote onboard new hires. Instead of solving that problem, they just decided let's go back to exactly how it was before." Kinda surprised at this. To me the "obvious" thing with remote onboarding is to fly in new hires somewhere with at least a handful of team members, and then do onboarding face to face. That along with travel twice a year would probably be more than enough. Sure, you'd likely need a big team to just plan out this kind of stuff, but you'd have a vibrant office, teams with each other, and people not feeling they're being dragged in.
- ghaff 3y ago
  >you'd have a vibrant office, teams with each other, and people not feeling they're being dragged in Really? Based on the overall tenor of the comments here, it sounds as if a lot of people would be resentful of being dragged into the office for the sake of onboarding/mentoring newbies and creating a "vibrant office culture." I honestly think that people will need to vote with their feet over time and potentially make significant tradeoffs (salary/stability/choice of work/commute) to get the work environment they personally prefer.
  - rtpg 3y ago
    Maybe it's just me projecting. I don't like being dragged into the office all the time. I like meeting up with coworkers a couple times a year (if only to get a feel for our "real personas", which can be hard over async text and video). It's also a good way of establishing a certain rhythm for progress. And ultimately onboarding remotely is super tough and isolating compared to having someone around physically for a bit. This is easier for me to say, as I do not have kids and am generally fond of staying in a new place for a bit every once in a while. I think twice-yearly team get-togethers (especially if they're organized in the understanding that work won't really get done) is a good breather. Get people to give little talks about stuff, chill out, have blue sky discussions about future plans... all the advantages that people get at conferences, on a small scale. I think people whine about "pointless" RTO (especially when executives calling for it aren't even following it), but what I'm thinking about at least has some defined point and pretty time gated. Some people really don't like adult field trips though (for good reason).
yankput 3y ago
why can’t they just give them oculus pro glasses and make them meet in horizon?
jbombadil 3y ago
I will never understand this. I prefer working from the office and being around my colleagues. It’s more comfortable than home, and the commute is an added bonus for me (short enough that doesn’t bother me, but provides a barrier for “I’m done with work for the day”). That being said I would never force my colleagues to go back to the office if they don’t want to. Their circumstances are different than mine. So what’s the problem with “you want to come to the office? Come. You want to work from home? Don’t” It’s cheaper from the company (no providing food for everyone, the office doesn’t have to accommodate everyone, etc) and better for all employees, who can do exactly whatever they want.
solardev 3y ago
It's time tech workers realized they're just expensive sheep with no real power. Time to unionize or form co-ops, or it'll just be another race to the bottom like every other job. Companies will say whatever they need to say when there's a growth bubble, and then take it all away as soon as there's not. It shouldn't be surprising.
- z3dd 3y ago
  Unions are not the solution to the RTO policies by itself. At least Austria and Germany have unions, and RTOs are rolled out same as in the US with no unions.
  - solardev 3y ago
    It can be part of the negotiation if enough people want it, vs individual devs having no power at all, no?
BertoldVdb 3y ago
Seems that implemented like this even the presumed benefits of RTO can't materialize and it's just a pure negative...
cg17 3y ago
[dead]
nrvn 3y ago
Meta should start dogfooding and create an HQ in metaverse and make it mandatory to return to this office instead of a physical one. I mean.. what is the whole point otherwise?
- gilbetron 3y ago
  This 1000%. It is crazy that they are spending billions on the metaverse but ignoring this huge opportunity to dogfood. Remote work is in its infancy and there is great potential here, and they have the resources and reasons to make it work. The only way to find it is to actually try all kinds of things. Explore all kinds of hardware, and let individual teams be creative. Find out what works! If they figure out a way to make remote work 2x better, they will get the massive growth %s they desperately want! edit: it is also insane that Zoom is doing the same thing ... Zoom!
  - m_rpn 3y ago
    Probably they know their own technology well enough to understand that it's not really fit for purpose, still they will try to sell it anyways to stupid corporate CEOs.
Tade0 3y ago
> Such frustrations are not leading to resignations, though. Which further underscores the importance of fuck you money. One possible explanation for this would be a war of attrition over severance. But why would Meta not want to do just another round of layoffs?
jedberg 3y ago
> The Meta spokesman said any issues with hot desking should be resolved if desks are booked properly through Meta's online desk reservation system, which lets a person book a desk a week in advance for up to three days in a row. I assume all the engineers have already reverse engineered the API and set up cron jobs to auto-reserve the same desk every week.

https://archive.ph/5bvCk https://archive.ph/5bvCk

mikae1 3y ago
https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clea...
ninjakeyboard 3y ago
https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome <- this one for chrome

> Until OKd, office work is required, even when teams are elsewhere. This is the one I find baffling about RTO. I know plenty of people who have been dragged into offices where they have no team members. So they are just on Zoom at a desk in the office rather than at home. I know of one guy where the company set up a local office for him and another person (who is not on his team), so they could be the two people in their office in their city. I did it for the last few days of my prior job. Was dragged into the office when all my co-workers were at least 3.5 hours away. Even if all the supposed benefits of in person are accepted at face value, none of that allows for them.

orra 3y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if it's just an excuse to fire people for not complying. Which then isn't baffling, just cynical and cruel.

osti 3y ago

Can we ban those blogspam sites such as business insider?

mvdtnz 3y ago
The rest of us are here to discuss it. If you don't want to, jog on. Don't tell us we can't.
- smeagull 3y ago
  Nobody can read the article. Posting it here was a waste of time.
  - greenyoda 3y ago
    Someone has already posted an archive link that allows non-subscribers to read the article. See this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37748603 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37748603 And if archive.ph doesn't work with your DNS, try this one: http://web.archive.org/web/20231003073031/https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-rto-mess-return-to-office-remote-work-2023-9 http://web.archive.org/web/20231003073031/https://www.busine... You could have created either of these links yourself in the time it took to post your comment (just go to archive.ph or web.archive.org and paste in the original URL).

bagels 3y ago

It was already hard to find a conference room sometimes there on a day when only 10% showed up. I can only imagine how bad it is now that people are there 50% and needing to VC with the other 50% that are home or in another office that day.

ricardobeat 3y ago
I'm pretty sure the VC acronym is already taken, especially on this forum :)
- bagels 3y ago
  I think it was clear from context. I could have said Rooms and nobody would know what I was talking about.

david_draco 3y ago

Has anyone actually been fired for not returning to office, after applying for home office, or is this only a threat?

rwmj 3y ago
People don't want to test this out, given that the job market is difficult at the moment. It does hint at the real, unstated reason for all this which is to try to get the headcount down. They are massively overstaffed and losing money on nonsense like the metaverse. I'm wondering if there are Meta employees on remote work contracts. The contract at the company I work for specifies that I work remotely, and no one can change that without offering me some quid pro quo (which of course I would never take).
Tempest1981 3y ago
I assume they'll first be ranked as "lower performers", then maybe fired in 1-2 years, or during the next downsizing. > the continued mandate that team leaders decide that 14.5% to 16.5% of their workers are in the lower performance categories
somsak2 3y ago
if my company asks me to come back, this will be my approach. I'll keep doing what I've been doing remotely and if they want to fire me, fine

KaiserPro 3y ago

Hotdesking can be so utterly impersonal it makes a mockery of RTO. The point of RTO is that you are surrounded by colleagues in your team so that you can spontaneously collaborate. It sounds like its just a meat market and everyone is jammed together regardless of team or affiliation. hotdesking only really works for a small number of situations, and even then, it needs careful planning and thought. You need permanent lockers so that you have somewhere to stash your shit. the equipment needs to be all the same class(to avoid "I want this one") and _higher_ quality than non-hotdesk. Repairs need to be proactive.

raverbashing 3y ago
This. Pretty much all of this And a good booking system to assign people to desks "in their regions" But I guess the managers that "are worried about collaboration" didn't think of that
carstenhag 3y ago
(Somewhat ITish company in Germany, 250 employees) - I had to fight hard to get the company to buy seven 4K monitors (total of 2800€) and now those seats are always booked lol. At least my colleagues are a bit more productive I guess... the other desks have 1080p monitors and look terrible when connected with a Mac.
- microtonal 3y ago
  What kind of company is that? The cost of a 4k display (and 400 Euro is pretty much bottom of the barrel when it comes to good displays) is a fraction of the yearly salary of an employee, lasts many years, and a good screen can help reducing eyesight problems. It always surprises me that companies apply austerity to weird things, like providing a setup that keeps employees healthy, while probably throwing a lot of money at irrelevant stuff.
  - dagw 3y ago
    You'd be surprised how accounting works at some companies. I've seen companies buying 10k euro civil engineering software to run on 1k euro computers that could barely handle it, and refusing to also pay to upgrade the computers.

rgblambda 3y ago

>"It seems impossible to get one desk for a long enough period," one employee said. The person noted one day having to go between hot desks at Menlo Park on different floors to get through a work day in which they'd been required to come in for meetings. So even when teams are co-located (which isn't a given), they aren't necessarily working face to face. This kind of flies in the face of the premise that RTO is needed for "collaboration". There's definitely another reason for RTO and it's not one the bosses are willing to state on the record.

otteromkram 3y ago
The section you quoted ends with, "for meetings." They can probably work anywhere, but need to be in the office for face-to-face meetings. Although, I'm not sure why the person would be losing their desk between meetings unless Meta had a policy for people to take their belongings with them if their going to be away from their desk for an extended period of time.
- afiori 3y ago
  The most likely option is that the booking system allows you to book a desk for less than a full day, so late bookers might be forced into fragmented bookings.

ProxCoques 3y ago

On the meeting room thing: I worked in an office a number of years ago where the name of the person who booked the meeting (and its time/duration) was shown on a small touch screen by the door. To start the meeting, that person (or their proxy) had to swipe the screen with their badge. If the swipe had not been completed after 10mins, the room would become free and accept anyone's swipe to start that meeting. Their name would then be displayed for the same duration as the original. The kicker was that after the 10mins (and if no swipe), the system would send an email to ALL EMPLOYEES saying "Room XYZ, booked by [name of culprit], is now free". To this day I still fondly think of the genius of the person who got that system approved!

lifeisstillgood 3y ago
Personally the local coffee shop has always been the best meeting room. Don't have a local coffee shop? Move offices
- c12 3y ago
  haha, many years ago when I worked in a large office the three meeting rooms where constantly busy so my team would grab a laptop and pop down the road to the pub for our meetings.
  - lifeisstillgood 3y ago
    Much harder to justify on the expenses claims report :-)
    - yieldcrv 3y ago
      these days
  - xnorswap 3y ago
    The pub lunch is the thing I miss most about my first job. Every Friday almost the entire office would decamp down to a local pub for lunch and a pint or two. The quality of the food was always very hit-or-miss (unless we went down the king's arms*, but that was seen as a bit pricey and fancy), and for many places if there were too many of us would get arsey for not booking ahead. But it was a great opportunity to just hear what everyone was up to and have a good chat in an unstructured way. I don't know if it's changing attitudes over the past 20 years, the particular companies I found myself at, the price of going to the pub, but it hasn't really been a thing at any of my places since. Now with WFH of course there is a complete absence of unstructured conversation. Every meeting has a purpose, every interaction there's something someone has in mind they want from the conversation. And while it's not impossible to chit chat still, it is impossible to overhear chit-chat, which is an underappreciated thing. Overheard conversations are a gold mine of knowledge sharing, many an interesting idea has come about because, "I couldn't help but overhear...". Now don't get me wrong, I don't want to suffer an hour long commute for that benefit, the cost-benefit skews all wrong. But I would like if everyone lived a 5 minute walk from the office. * might have been the king's head, memory plays tricks.

lnxg33k1 3y ago

A unionisation of tech workers is long overdue, we can't expect fair working conditions consistently by leaving the single randomer citizen to fight alone against multi billion companies and various interests

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>fair working conditions Ironic, considering that tech workers have by far the best working conditions of the working class.
- lnxg33k1 3y ago
  Why is it ironic? What does you comment aim to achieve? It's a statement of a fact, are you implying that should we aim for shittier conditions for tech workers? Really sometimes I wish people would activate braincells before writing
  - beardyw 3y ago
    Ironic is not the same as wrong.
- guntherhermann 3y ago
  I don't consider 'tech workers', working class. We're higher paid, our jobs do not destroy our bodies, in my mind it's a purely middle class career. I agree with your actual point though, we are pampered.
  - rwmj 3y ago
    Of course tech workers are working class. You either give your labour for a living or you invest capital in businesses, and almost every tech worker is doing the former. > our jobs do not destroy our bodies I've got news for you there.
    - thathndude 3y ago

rwmj 3y ago

> "We have not yet figured out hybrid work," Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, wrote on Threads. "Assigned desks mean lots of empty chairs. Hotel desks mean lots of unfamiliar faces. Pods are good for privacy but take up a ton of space. We have a lot to figure out." Yeah, maybe work all that out before you demand everyone come back to the office? Just a thought ...

jraph 3y ago
I had this thought reading the whole article. Surely the company has enough money to figure all this stuff out. The way things are described, it feels like the company is being incredibly disrespectful to its employees.
- iainmerrick 3y ago
  It also seems a bit strange for the company to have an overarching goal around building a "metaverse", but not to try to figure out how they themselves might use those tools for their own work. No appetite for their own dogfood?
  - danielbln 3y ago
    Especially with the new Metaverse tech that can be seen in the Lex Fridman interview. No-one gives a damn about those weird comic avatars, but a real representation of a human including facial movements etc., that might more interesting.
    - jraph 3y ago
      > but a real representation of a human including facial movements Probably at high risk of landing in the uncanny valley, it has to be executed very well, so well I'm not sure it possible at this time.
      - danielbln 3y ago
        I'd say it's past the uncanny valley overall: https://youtu.be/MVYrJJNdrEg?feature=shared&t=799 https://youtu.be/MVYrJJNdrEg?feature=shared&t=799

lifeisstillgood 3y ago

I (believe/know/research support?) that the most effective team setup is one well defined team in one single physical location, with a clear mandate (and no "management" to duck it up). Think team of great creative people working in same office, with door shut. This works for any team no matter the skill level (ie if you have so-so developers, they will perform best in these circumstances even if better developers exist.) And every step away from this a company takes the company is explicitly accepting its reduction in performance. Have people spread over different desks in same office. meh Have people spread over different offices and time zones? Have no clear mandate? Confusing requirements ? constantly changing roster of management needing different items ? In the end management has just one lever (like central banks) - how they org wise their people. It's not a hard job but to justify their own wages they have to keep fiddling. And it costs everyone

_ph_ 3y ago
This breaks down if you have teams in more than one location which have to interact. So yes, for smaller companies, being together at one location and reaping the benefits of direct collaboration is a thing, for international companies less so. Then there is the problem, if you do put everyone in the same room, that can be distracting too. A lot of software development requires quite time for concentration. Yes, having direct access to your team members is great, but not all the time.
- lifeisstillgood 3y ago
  >>> This breaks down if you have teams in more than one location which have to interact. for seperate distinct teams that's fine. See conways law. but often the people are in same team across different locations - meaning their interaction is just kaput
Lyngbakr 3y ago
I agree, but I personally also need a couple of WFH days each week so I can be completely without distraction for tasks that require deep thought. My concentration is broken easily and I find other people talking across desks to each other or walking around in the office area distracting. When I'm WFH they simply can't distract me, as my notifications are switched off and I'm alone.

ThinkBeat 3y ago

I dont quite understand the situation. Before Covid people for the most part worked at the office? Then there was a period where people worked from home. Now they have to return to the office 3 days a week. Esp considering sold layoffs, would the amount of space availalbe now, be the same as prior to Covid? Or did Facebook hire so many people during Covid, that the layoffs were not enough to return to pre covid numbers? Or did Facebook close / sell part of their office space?

fmajid 3y ago
They did hire a lot during the pandemic, and have recently broken the lease on a London office with a $180M penalty or 7 years of rent (they had 18 years left).
- ghaff 3y ago
  For all the conspiracy theorists claiming that RTO is being driven by CEOs propping up the commercial real estate investments of their buddies, anecdotally I'm seeing quite a bit of companies not renewing or even breaking leases, putting most expansion plans on hold, and either leasing much smaller dedicated spaces or even just making co-working arrangements.
  - fmajid 3y ago
    That is indeed a bizarre theory. No amount of kudos from golfing buddies is going to make up for the raises they could have given themselves for cutting office costs. One thing I expect to happen is companies will install more one-person soundproofed cubbies for salespeople to make calls without disturbing the entire floor, or people to have videoconferences. What I would love to see is now that offices are less loaded, have more individual offices where people can concentrate and work rather than open-plan layouts that were really introduced because they are space-efficient, mealy-mouthed rationalizations about collaboration notwitstanding.
bluescrn 3y ago
Covid fizzled out, then we were told we were amidst an imminent climate apocalypse. Good time to make that end to unnecessary commuting permanent, right? Didn't last long, did it?

rtpg 3y ago

> "It's a mess," one current employee said of Meta's RTO so far. "And all of this because it's difficult to remote onboard new hires. Instead of solving that problem, they just decided let's go back to exactly how it was before." Kinda surprised at this. To me the "obvious" thing with remote onboarding is to fly in new hires somewhere with at least a handful of team members, and then do onboarding face to face. That along with travel twice a year would probably be more than enough. Sure, you'd likely need a big team to just plan out this kind of stuff, but you'd have a vibrant office, teams with each other, and people not feeling they're being dragged in.

ghaff 3y ago
>you'd have a vibrant office, teams with each other, and people not feeling they're being dragged in Really? Based on the overall tenor of the comments here, it sounds as if a lot of people would be resentful of being dragged into the office for the sake of onboarding/mentoring newbies and creating a "vibrant office culture." I honestly think that people will need to vote with their feet over time and potentially make significant tradeoffs (salary/stability/choice of work/commute) to get the work environment they personally prefer.
- rtpg 3y ago
  Maybe it's just me projecting. I don't like being dragged into the office all the time. I like meeting up with coworkers a couple times a year (if only to get a feel for our "real personas", which can be hard over async text and video). It's also a good way of establishing a certain rhythm for progress. And ultimately onboarding remotely is super tough and isolating compared to having someone around physically for a bit. This is easier for me to say, as I do not have kids and am generally fond of staying in a new place for a bit every once in a while. I think twice-yearly team get-togethers (especially if they're organized in the understanding that work won't really get done) is a good breather. Get people to give little talks about stuff, chill out, have blue sky discussions about future plans... all the advantages that people get at conferences, on a small scale. I think people whine about "pointless" RTO (especially when executives calling for it aren't even following it), but what I'm thinking about at least has some defined point and pretty time gated. Some people really don't like adult field trips though (for good reason).

yankput 3y ago

why can’t they just give them oculus pro glasses and make them meet in horizon?

jbombadil 3y ago

I will never understand this. I prefer working from the office and being around my colleagues. It’s more comfortable than home, and the commute is an added bonus for me (short enough that doesn’t bother me, but provides a barrier for “I’m done with work for the day”). That being said I would never force my colleagues to go back to the office if they don’t want to. Their circumstances are different than mine. So what’s the problem with “you want to come to the office? Come. You want to work from home? Don’t” It’s cheaper from the company (no providing food for everyone, the office doesn’t have to accommodate everyone, etc) and better for all employees, who can do exactly whatever they want.

solardev 3y ago

It's time tech workers realized they're just expensive sheep with no real power. Time to unionize or form co-ops, or it'll just be another race to the bottom like every other job. Companies will say whatever they need to say when there's a growth bubble, and then take it all away as soon as there's not. It shouldn't be surprising.

z3dd 3y ago
Unions are not the solution to the RTO policies by itself. At least Austria and Germany have unions, and RTOs are rolled out same as in the US with no unions.
- solardev 3y ago
  It can be part of the negotiation if enough people want it, vs individual devs having no power at all, no?

BertoldVdb 3y ago

Seems that implemented like this even the presumed benefits of RTO can't materialize and it's just a pure negative...

cg17 3y ago

[dead]

nrvn 3y ago

Meta should start dogfooding and create an HQ in metaverse and make it mandatory to return to this office instead of a physical one. I mean.. what is the whole point otherwise?

gilbetron 3y ago
This 1000%. It is crazy that they are spending billions on the metaverse but ignoring this huge opportunity to dogfood. Remote work is in its infancy and there is great potential here, and they have the resources and reasons to make it work. The only way to find it is to actually try all kinds of things. Explore all kinds of hardware, and let individual teams be creative. Find out what works! If they figure out a way to make remote work 2x better, they will get the massive growth %s they desperately want! edit: it is also insane that Zoom is doing the same thing ... Zoom!
- m_rpn 3y ago
  Probably they know their own technology well enough to understand that it's not really fit for purpose, still they will try to sell it anyways to stupid corporate CEOs.

Tade0 3y ago

> Such frustrations are not leading to resignations, though. Which further underscores the importance of fuck you money. One possible explanation for this would be a war of attrition over severance. But why would Meta not want to do just another round of layoffs?

jedberg 3y ago

> The Meta spokesman said any issues with hot desking should be resolved if desks are booked properly through Meta's online desk reservation system, which lets a person book a desk a week in advance for up to three days in a row. I assume all the engineers have already reverse engineered the API and set up cron jobs to auto-reserve the same desk every week.