4 ms·

> "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 pr

by 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).
  - ghaff 3y ago
    Oh, I'm fine with twice-yearly get togethers of an often highly-distributed team. But I'm not sure how much that helps with onboarding. It certainly doesn't lead to a vibrant office culture.
- wink 3y ago
  Also not sure how people who usually don't work there would create a vibrant environment, probably just as awkward to them as to the new people unless they were there for ages before WFH
DebtDeflation 3y ago
> they just decided let's go back to exactly how it was before The problem is that the "how it was before" refers to how it was 15-20 years ago. We had been building towards remote/flexible work for a long time before Covid, Covid was just the catalyst that forced everyone to break through the organizational inertia preventing progress. There was a time when you went to an office, sat in front of a desktop plugged into an ethernet jack and next to a landline phone, and ran a bunch of on prem corporate applications to get your job done. As laptops, smartphones, collaborative SaaS applications, WiFi, 3/4/5G all became ubiquitous, many of the reasons for being in a physical office went away. Now we have this meme world where I bring my work laptop from home to an office (commuting 45+ minutes in the process), connect to shitty WiFi, and get on Zoom calls with my team who are scattered around the world also sitting in offices they've been forced back to.

by rtpg 3y ago

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).
- ghaff 3y ago
  Oh, I'm fine with twice-yearly get togethers of an often highly-distributed team. But I'm not sure how much that helps with onboarding. It certainly doesn't lead to a vibrant office culture.
wink 3y ago
Also not sure how people who usually don't work there would create a vibrant environment, probably just as awkward to them as to the new people unless they were there for ages before WFH

DebtDeflation 3y ago

> they just decided let's go back to exactly how it was before The problem is that the "how it was before" refers to how it was 15-20 years ago. We had been building towards remote/flexible work for a long time before Covid, Covid was just the catalyst that forced everyone to break through the organizational inertia preventing progress. There was a time when you went to an office, sat in front of a desktop plugged into an ethernet jack and next to a landline phone, and ran a bunch of on prem corporate applications to get your job done. As laptops, smartphones, collaborative SaaS applications, WiFi, 3/4/5G all became ubiquitous, many of the reasons for being in a physical office went away. Now we have this meme world where I bring my work laptop from home to an office (commuting 45+ minutes in the process), connect to shitty WiFi, and get on Zoom calls with my team who are scattered around the world also sitting in offices they've been forced back to.