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Also notable: > Unity will shut down offices in 14 locations such as Berlin and Singapore, pending employee consultation in some countries, and significantly r
by starkparker 3y ago
Also notable:
> Unity will shut down offices in 14 locations such as Berlin and Singapore, pending employee consultation in some countries, and significantly reduce its office footprint for the remaining offices, including in San Francisco and Bellevue, Washington.
> Unity will no longer mandate that employees work from offices three a days a week and will reduce "full in-office services" to three days a week in most locations, the company said.
- seattle_spring 3y agoNice! It's nice to see a company make an employee-friendly movement here, as opposed to many of the other big players forcing their employees back into the commute rat-race.
- dsgnr 3y agoIt seems more like its to save money on office real estate and the fees that come with that like cleaning services, security, etc than it is about being employee friendly.
- lmm 3y agoWhatever their reasons, the end result sounds good for employees.
- dylan604 3y agoif you're not part of the staff being let go
- johnnyanmac 3y agoUnity is a worldwide company and while the HQ is now in San francisco, the origins lie in Copenhagen. There's physically no way to reasonably make everyone RTO because there are multiple big bases, and Unity was adjusted to telecommuncations well before the pandemic due to that. So I'm not too surprised it chose to size down physical locations when push came to shove, compared to other tech companies in SV doubling down on their billion dollar real estate they built.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago>There's physically no way to reasonably make everyone RTO because there are multiple big bases Sure, but from what I saw a lot of these VFX/arts/game studios despite being international, still mandate their teams to be in-office a certain amount of days per week due to the nature of creative work. Especially that certain things like a games or VFX tend to not have their development spread internationally, but are usually developed by only a certain branch office, in which case some days of in-person collaboration might be more productive.
- johnnyanmac 3y agoYeah, games are in a weird place because console dev kits were paranoid as all hell when it came to usage. There'd be office mandates purely because you couldn't take those home, nor even remote into one without a bunch of red tape. There's still remnants of that to this day, which is probably why they couldn't be even more aggressive on remote status. That is fortunately one big thing loosened over COVID, though; could never imagine having a devkit in my own house before 2020. ---- can't speak too much for the vfx industry. I imagine its similar culture and NDA contracts in terms of where content can "stay".
- FirmwareBurner 3y agoDevkits have been software locked for a while now and need an always on internet connectivity to the mothership to work, so even if the HW kit would leak onto e-bay, there's nothing you can do with them as they would immediately be backlisted and usually that leads to the studio being blacklisted as well for the blunder so it's natural the studios don't want them to leave the office. You never know which disgruntled employee would rage-quit taking the devkit with him leaving you to deal with the wrath from the console manufacturer. When I was doing some security evaluations on a gaming console it was mandatory to lock the HW samples in a vault at the end of the business day when the last person to leave the office was done with them. Naturally that made WFH impossible even during covid.
- rightbyte 3y ago
- MrScruff 3y agoUnless like me and many other people I know, you prefer working in an office five days a week.
- ta1243 3y agoI don't even work five days a week!
- seattle_spring 3y agoLuckily for people like you and other people you know, most companies provide this, so please don’t ruin it for the few remaining companies that don’t.
- MrScruff 3y agoSure, I’m just arguing that limiting how often you can work in the office isn’t inherently a win for all employees.
- dralley 3y agoJim Whitehurst was always very remote-friendly when he was CEO at Red Hat
- oofta-boofta 3y ago[dead]
- 3seashells 3y agoOne that has no benefit for employees and employers, beyond tax incentives.. Real planned economy vibes there.. Well.. You can not save economic models based on nost algia with lots of costs for all sides. They just wither and die over time anyway..
- dboreham 3y agoSound of a shoe dropping...
- a012 3y agoIt seems like WFH is a "perk" when company is in cut down expenses mode, and RTO is mandated when it's thriving.
- lotsofpulp 3y agoI would have thought it is RTO mandated when you need to reduce payroll and want to incentivize workers to resign, and then back to WFH once that target is met and expenses need to be cut further.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago> incentivize workers to resign, and then back to WFH once that target is met and expenses need to be cut further Sounds like fraud, and managing in bad faith.
- simoncion 3y agoIt's not at all fraud. It's definitely shitball, dishonest, bad faith management... but it's not fraud.
- 29athrowaway 3y agoWhen you layoff large numbers of people, WFH makes it easier. When you need to start a company or do a hiring push, being in an office can help. In a company that only hires high seniority employees, WFH vs office doesn't matter much.
- eloisant 3y agoI think it's the other way around. When you want to layoff a large number of people: RTO will increase the number of employees quitting so you don't have to layoff as many When starting a company: WFH means you don't need offices, or at least smaller offices which makes a big difference When you do a hiring push: being open to WFH gives you a bigger pool to draw from
- gumballindie 3y agoWhoa imagine the people they forced to relocate and now are telling them it was the wrong decision. I can only say that unity’s leadership are idiots, nothing else.