Snap Demands Employees Work In Office 80% of the Time Starting Early Next Year (cnn.com) 113
Snapchat's parent company is asking workers to return to the office 80% of the time, or the equivalent of four days a week, beginning early next year, in the latest sign of tech employees receiving less flexibility nearly three years after the pandemic took hold and amid a wave of industry cost cutting. CNN reports: "After working remotely for so long we're excited to get everyone back together next year with our new 80/20 hybrid model," a spokesperson for Snap (SNAP) confirmed to CNN in a statement Tuesday. "We believe that being together in person, while retaining flexibility for our team members, will enhance our ability to deliver on our strategic priorities of growing our community, driving revenue growth, and leading in [augmented reality]." The new policy will take effect at the end of February.
News of Snap's stricter in-office policy was first reported by Bloomberg, which cited an internal memo from CEO Evan Spiegel telling employees they may have to "sacrifice" some amount of "individual convenience" but it will benefit "our collective success."
News of Snap's stricter in-office policy was first reported by Bloomberg, which cited an internal memo from CEO Evan Spiegel telling employees they may have to "sacrifice" some amount of "individual convenience" but it will benefit "our collective success."
In related news (Score:5, Funny)
Snap has announced an emergency hiring spree.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I hate the hypocrisy of these companies.
Re: more to follow (Score:2)
Because they spent a fortune on office space and theyâ(TM)re going to make sure it gets used. Most office rentals are in the millions of dollars per month and commercial real estate is worth trillions. If itâ(TM)s not being used as offices what happens? Companies have to dump it at a massive loss.
Re: more to follow (Score:5, Interesting)
Because they spent a fortune on office space and theyâ(TM)re going to make sure it gets used. Most office rentals are in the millions of dollars per month and commercial real estate is worth trillions. If itâ(TM)s not being used as offices what happens? Companies have to dump it at a massive loss.
Yea, my company just got rid of their offices in downtown SF instead of their staff. Funnily enough we have had record profits. And we just got a wave of CVs from Snap today. I was wondering why until just now. But our staff average age is about 35 so what works for us might now work for others. Then again, if the average age of your staff is 25, I doubt you were getting anything useful done anyway. You were spending all your time explaining all the stuff they don't teach in college, how to use SCM, how to write documentation, why not to use QuickSort, etc. Turns out that doesn't produce revenue, who knew...
Re: (Score:2)
Office space is a loss, and if they could get rid of it they would. They are not requiring you to be in the office so that they can spend more on leases than they need.
In some cases, offices are needed. Lab space, testing space, manufacturing (none of ours shut down for pandemic), etc. The people who don't need offices tend to be web devs and such, things that can be done 100% from a computer screen. Most people I think are in the middle, those most younger devs fail to see that the entire world is not
Re: (Score:2)
But I guarantee a lot of accountants have to be in office, if only to printout official records and stick into official binders to go into official cabinets
I'm confirming with an accountant I know, but I'm fairly confident they don't do that anymore.
you don't do that stuff solely in the cloud.
"The cloud" is not the only option. People can work on company owned servers from home.
Re: (Score:2)
We do have cabinets with official accounting stuff. Maybe not the day to day books, but there's official stuff with signatures that gets kept. Also legal has their collection of papers. Even in software and firmware we have a big ass safe that holds the certs and shards. Meanwhile the Holy Root Cert is on a Windows XP PC, which is placed inside the Ark of the Covenant which is buried beneath the building.
Re: (Score:2)
Here is his response (he's a controller):
Crappy accounting is [done on paper], yes. We are going through a process of identifying positions as on site, hybrid, or fully remote eligible and every one on my team will be fully remote eligible.
Some folks have tried to go back to paper for some things as they've gone back to the office (other departments) and I've had to put my foot down on a few things and say we no longer accept a paper copy of this or that etc. It's rare but old habits die hard for some I guess.
Re: more to follow (Score:3, Insightful)
If your employees are more productive working from home and you're locked into a 20-year lease on a large chunk of office space, then you keep working from home. That lease is sunk cost (or committed cost), so it should not influence your decision. (In addition, you'll save a bit of money by cutting building maintenance back to a skeleton crew or paying a penalty to exit your lease.)
The reason for these return-to-office policies must lie elsewhere.
Re: (Score:2)
it should not influence your decision.
The key word being "should". Managers are no more immune from stupid irrational decisions than anyone else.
Re: (Score:3)
"If itâ(TM)s not being used as offices what happens? Companies have to dump it at a massive loss."
Either a) there's no way to terminate the lease early, in which case its a completely sunk cost and does not impact the decision to force people back to the office either way, or b) there are early termination provisions to the lease, which means the difference between the remaining lease and the early termination penalties counts against the change in productivity of forcing people back to the office.
In t
Re:more to follow (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Can you site any articles that demonstrate a company has become more profitable by allowing workers to work remotely that has a clear and measurable impact that the profit growth has specifically come from employee performance increases?
I'm being very specific because I find people in discussions like to take companies that switched to remote workers that are losing profit to 'blaming it on the economy' and any company with an increase of profits is immediately 'because of the self serving agenda I am runni
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
So basically no, you don't have that information available at this time.
These are all great theoretical scenarios that absolutely make sense logically that it would save expenses, but practically and the reality I've seen are yielding different results. Even without proof, I would expect that there are 100% chance of scenarios where it's a better deal to have staff work remotely, and that it really benefits some companies, but for the vast majority of companies I see people calling for remote work, it would
Re: (Score:2)
Can you site any articles that demonstrate a company has become more profitable by allowing workers to work remotely that has a clear and measurable impact that the profit growth has specifically come from employee performance increases?
The first article's discussion of Best Buy's use of ROWE (Results Oriented Work Environment) is particularly interesting. The second article's discussion of hunter-gatherer culture is also quite interesting.
https://www.newyorker.com/cult... [newyorker.com]
https://www.newyorker.com/cult... [newyorker.com]
https://www.newyorker.com/cult... [newyorker.com]
https://www.newyorker.com/cult... [newyorker.com]
Re: (Score:2)
The first article's discussion of Best Buy's use of ROWE (Results Oriented Work Environment) is particularly interesting. The second article's discussion of hunter-gatherer culture is also quite interesting. https://www.newyorker.com/cult... [newyorker.com] https://www.newyorker.com/cult... [newyorker.com] https://www.newyorker.com/cult... [newyorker.com] https://www.newyorker.com/cult... [newyorker.com]
The second link given is incomplete - it should be https://www.newyorker.com/cult... [newyorker.com] .
Having read that piece, I can confirm that it is interesting, thought-provoking, and relevant to the current discussion.
Re: (Score:1)
I'll have a read and see how that stacks up today. It's difficult to trust the content from the newyorker because it clearly aligns with a specific political side. If you had any articles from a news reporting site that the political side is money I'd trust it more. Businesses have to be profitable to work, so yeah. You can't buy a car with feelings.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:more to follow (Score:5, Interesting)
You skipped the step where you explain why in-office work is more profitable than work from home.
Re:more to follow (Score:5, Interesting)
The last three jobs I've had, my "collaboration" was entirely with off-site folks. As in they were in different time zones from me.
What, exactly, is the benefit of driving to a central office if the folks I actually work with aren't actually there?
As for "Accountability' -- what exactly is that supposed to mean? If you have no way of telling if someone is doing their job other than pyhsically watching them, then you really have no idea or understanding about what they actually do
Re: (Score:2)
The last three jobs I've had, my "collaboration" was entirely with off-site folks.
Exactly. Further, my last job was as an admin for machines that were spread all across the country. In fact, we had over a dozen remote sites, but the only site I actually knew about was Columbus, because I volunteered to drive there to fix a down host, if the contract support couldn't show up in time. Combine that with half of our team based in India, my seat in the office was about as pointless as The Rock seeing a barber for a haircut.
And we were held accountable every morning with our "daily servi
Re: (Score:2)
Work from home absolutely works in many industries. But keep in mind if the work can be done from anywhere then you will be competing for jobs from everywhere.
Sure, you may have an edge against a team outsourced from India where language and cultural barriers can make even cheaper labor less desirable. But can you say the same with Florida, Upstate New York, or West Virginia?
Hopefully your skills are valuable enough to continue to demand a premium for your services. I retired to a low cost of living area a
Re: (Score:2)
"if the work can be done from anywhere then you will be competing for jobs from everywhere"
Just because you're willing to show up at the office when you don't need to doesn't mean you're not competing for jobs with people from everywhere anyway.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
Collaboration and accountability, There's two big ones.
If you can't evaluate whether someone is doing their job from their work, you aren't qualified to manage them, period.
Re: (Score:2)
If you can't evaluate whether someone is doing their job from their work, you aren't qualified to manage them, period.
The real reason why this kind of managers want people to get back to office is that monitoring employees is the only thing they can do, thus they cannot really do anything remotely. And they realize their bosses in turn will realize they are not needed. Demanding everybody to come to the office is just their way of protecting their own asses.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Or it could be that they are desperate to have their stock price go back up and are willing to try anything.
Anything but cutting the dead wood from management.
How do CEOs think they get shitty employees anyway? It's mostly shitty managers doing a shitty job with their part of the hiring process. They can cut the poor performers, but they will just end up with more of them. These back to the office mandates are just a way to get people to quit, but the best employees will quit first since they can get hired again most easily.
Re: (Score:2)
You skipped the step where you explain why in-office work is more profitable than work from home.
"Because: REASONS!" doesn't have the same effect. Saying "Because out bottom line is taking a hit due to low occupancy!" would hurt the commercial market even further, and invite some unpleasant scrutiny.
A great many tech companies, and other companies overall, are cursed with a LOT of real estate on the books. Some of this is actually used for their valuation, because it's supposed to be "worth" $$$ Millions of dollars. The problem is that valuation is based on the theory of short supply. One thing we
Re:more to follow (Score:4, Interesting)
> When it’s hard to find employees, perks need to be dangled to attract workers.
All markets that have limited pools of talent, regardless of what can be offered. There is a cost-benefit balance and most companies can't/won't outbid without constraint. Companies will continue to hire wherever they can, for what they need. This was true, pre-pandemic. Remember outsourcing?
> As the looming recession next year lumbers forward, expect almost all companies to return to in office only/mostly paradigms.
I think this is not a well-reasoned prediction. A recession will continue to push workers toward more remote locales. Ironically, the most valuable perk is wfh. What other perks are there, that a developer might consider? A gym membership to a gym you didn't pick? Free lunch fridays? There is currently difficulty hiring with salary/bonus schedules, which are inconsistently valued as a replacement for wfh, by hire-prospects. Everyone's situation is different and there's plenty of remote jobs available. I expect that offices will continue to ramp down for the foreseeable future until it's standard to have satellite locations and/or a singular HQ campus.
Re: (Score:2)
This is a dumb take.
As many companies recorded record profits during the pandemic when people were working from home, you would expect them to continue that to continue to make record profits.
The fact that they are forcing people back has more to to do with real estate and making middle managers happy than profit.
Re: (Score:2)
That's a hard one to directly correlate, just because there were record profits doesn't mean it was directly because of WFH. We also had record stock market returns while having mass unemployment and businesses folding left and right from forced closure.
The pendulum may swing a bit before settling. For some businesses more WFH will be better, for others a hybrid model or full office work might be required. Now that MANY MANY more businesses have at least tried the WFH model and invested in the infrastruc
Re: (Score:2)
Remote work, to stay or go? (Score:3)
I was waiting after Covid: I could move out of the city, where my jobs have been centered (I'm in a particular field), or I could stay. I didn't want to leave and then be unable to get a job in the city because I did. OTOH, I don't really want to stay around so many neighbors who don't give a shit about the neighborhood, because they're all just renters anyway.
I opted to wait. If things were still remote in two years after covid, I'd go -- there are significant drawbacks to being in the city, but I wanted to be closer to the office. So, two years later, still remote - and the companies that I've worked for in the past two years have decided that they're going to be permanently remote. Companies in California can get good employees who don't want to be in the San Francisco area, and those employees will be paid (near) California rates for leaving wherever - it's win-win for California companies and those remote workers.
But then there's this recession, and the companies are shedding employees, and using it as an opportunity to force out the full-remote that was first required, and then a benefit of the job market after Covid.
The question now is: is the recession going to be used to force out remote work? What will things be like in two years?...
Re: (Score:2)
I would be surprised if remote workers are not first to go. A job market in which you can switch jobs without leaving your bedroom is a very fluid market, which cuts both ways.
I am not even arguing that this is necessarily good for business. But if companies, right or wrong, see fit to overcome the friction to staff a position in-person, then the higher difficult of re-filling it l
Re: (Score:2)
So I have held onto my house nearer a city where there are ample tech jobs. I feel that I can't make
Re: (Score:1)
Funny thing is... corporations are fine with offshore workers (many of whom do crappy work) and with subcontractors.
It's about the ego of the bosses. Not about productivity.
They can't have a big ego if the office is empty-- even if the company is productive and successful.
Good to know. (Score:3)
So...buy March put options?
Re: (Score:2)
No one in any quantifiable sense can prove that working remotely increases a companies profits or growth
You have that backwards. Rent in downtown SF is easily millions a year in cost. You can't just wave your hand and claim that forcing workers into the office increases productivity by that much. The rent is a real cost. Your "productivity" is something you can't measure, maybe it has value, maybe it doesn't but you can't prove it. You are trying to argue the imaginary number will win over the real cost reduction. Also, for bonus points, the most senior technical staff that can change jobs at a whim and
Re: (Score:1)
On top of that.. when I retired a decade ago- each cubicle cost $5,000. And cubicles were replaced about once every 8 years due to changes in style and wear and tear.
Plus letting people work remotely is a great way to
a) give them a 10% raise without paying a dime for it.
b) give them back 2 hours of their time per day which is priceless.
I think 1 or 2 days in the office per week is fine for most people. And one week per quarter for true remote workers. And no office time at all for very remote workers w
Re: (Score:1)
No, you have theoretical cost savings. The rest of us are seeing companies suffer as employee productivity drops, and they start working t wo jobs. Productivity can absolutely be measured in many jobs, it's delusional to think you can't measure productivity.
E.G You sitting at home watching youtube all day, or you actually doing the work you were hired to do. You can absolutely measure the amount of time productive activities were performed versus time unproductive activities were performed.
Trying to measure
Re: (Score:2)
Found the idiot who can't read and has no argument. The person you responded to made a valid point: Rent in offices in major US cities is ridiculously high. Cutting that cost on its own will increase profits, all other things being equal. The fuck is wrong with you?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No one in any quantifiable sense can prove that working remotely increases a companies profits or growth
Except they did: https://www.gartner.com/en/articles/think-hybrid-work-doesnt-work-the-data-disagrees [gartner.com]
Re: (Score:1)
Except Gartner is known to be heavily biased.
See "https://www.brightworkresearch.com/how-to-view-gartners-financial-bias-in-favor-of-large-vendors/"
I'm not discounting Gartner's study out of hand. I'm just saying if a large company wanted them to say that, they'd say it.
The smug 7.6% (Score:1, Troll)
IT in the US accounts for about 7.6% of the overall civilian workforce. The vast majority of the US workforce has no choice but to work outside of home. You can't, at national scale, build, transport, repair, heal, mine, grow and harvest (well, I guess farmers are mostly "work at home" in a broad sense), protect life and property, or feed and entertain the masses from your home office. When you die, the mortician is not going to do his work in his home mortuary-cum-garage.
I have serious doubts about the bre
Re: (Score:2)
My office job is fake work, I shouldn't have to be physically present to smash buttons on a keyboard. It's ridiculous to expect it. Just as ridiculous to expect that with current technology that a construction worker can operate a backhoe remotely. Maybe one day, but it'll probably be one person monitoring 20 robotic backhoes and 95% fewer construction workers. But there is a who slew of non-IT jobs that are office jobs, and a few number of non-office jobs that could be done remotely or nearly so. Times are
Re: (Score:2)
IT in the US accounts for about 7.6% of the overall civilian workforce. The vast majority of the US workforce has no choice but to work outside of home.
IT doesn't include phone workers etc, who can also work from home. You do realize that most people in the western world have service jobs, right? If you think the vast majority of the US workforce is doing old-timey work like fellin' trees and shit, you're off your nut.
Re: (Score:3)
At a time when companies gladly outsource work overseas to people who can't even speak English, it comes across as a bit hypocritical to demand your mostly white, male employees come into the office while letting your mostly Asian contractors work from India.
It's not just a matter of the fact that the work can be done from home; farmers, auctioneers, lawyers, etc... routinely work from home. It's the fact that there's a substantial monetary, social, and environmental cost to commuting, and companies are
Here we go again. (Score:2)
The US slavers want their peons back on the plantation.
I manage a small (10) team of security architects. A few of the guys go to the office once a week. I suspect mainly to get away from the wife/kids. A few go in once a month, one goes in once every quarter and the rest (myself included) never go in.
Productivity is high, retention is high, people want to get jobs with us. We all do our jobs well and it's noticed. We work on national critical systems.
If your people "need" to be in the office 3-4 days a wee
Re: Here we go again. (Score:2)
Forgot to say, Snap people ? GTFO right now. Freshen up the CV.
Watch their frantic backpedalling in a couple of months.
Re: (Score:2)
Or maybe different jobs have different requirements?
Maybe the type of people that apply for different jobs also have a different work eithic then you do?
Maybe a lot of people do not have the space at home to have an effecient workplace?
Communication SW (Score:2)
Uh big, DUCK YOU (Score:3)
Ya, time to sell that stock.
No, this has NOTHING to do about productivity. Without a doubt, I am far more productive not spending 2-3 hours a day in traffic. Not having to take days off unexpectedly for vehicles with 100K+ miles to sit in the shop.
Nope, this is all about control and lack of trust. And it needs to end. And frankly, I would rather see the entire economy collapse and America dissolve than return to mandatory in-officework for jobs that do not necessitate it.
So what? (Score:2)
If you don't like your job, you get another one. And even now, there is such unprecedented demand for tech workers that it's ridiculously simple to get a bunch of job offers if you're even reasonably competent.
You also can start your own company and allow / force people work wherever and whenever they want, as long as you are complying with all Federal, state, and local employment laws. That's capitalism.
This is likely another top-heavy tech company going through some "organic reductions in force" (meanin
Office Workers == Political power (Score:1)
Businesses get sweet deals because they can create jobs for states and municipalities.
Because the employees spend money (a lot of money) and pay taxes (a lot of taxes) in those states and municipalities.
If your company goes from delivering 5,000 workers to the local economy to 50 workers, it's going to lose a lot of political power and status.
New York City has been pretty blunt in its opposition to working from home. Working from home destroys businesses, tax revenue, and real estate values (and hence eve
Can't afford layoffs? Just end remote work (Score:1)
then the problem of 'excess headcount' takes care of itself without having to pay out PTO or severance.
Remote work is not going anywhere (Score:3)
Just because a trash company that produces nothing of any societal value announces that they are forcing their workers back to the office does not indicate that remote work is over for everyone across the board.
Snap is a worthless company with a junk stock that is trading for less now than when they went public. They are hardly an indicator of overall job market health as it relates to working from home or working from an office. I still field multiple requests per week from recruiters offering full time remote positions. My current employer is fully remote and runs monthly metrics on our productivity and the reports show a constant upward trend in the work being done.
Articles like this are just lame bids to spread FUD about remote work by people who insist that being in an office is the only way to work for everyone. I am not concerned about what Snap is doing with their workforce, nor am I concerned with remote work going away anytime soon. I have been working full time remote since 2016, and that is not going to change for me because a worthless social media company is grasping at any straw they can to stave off the inevitable failure that is coming.
Re:At some point (Score:5, Insightful)
But that's not true.
And many of these people only accepted job offers due to it being fully remote; so this is labor fraud to a lot of angry people.
Re:At some point (Score:4, Interesting)
A whole lot are actively planning on leaving. They signed very long term leases so there's no urgency in many cases, but they are planning to not renew everywhere you look.
I work for a large organization that is an anchor tenant at a major skyscraper in SF. We've already made the decision to leave and are looking at the alternatives as far as spaces go for our main "office". There's no need to have a large office if no one comes into the office. This situation will decimate downtown areas like NY, SF, LA... You may not know of any companies like this but you should get out more.
Re: (Score:3)
Horseshit. Keep making fun of businesses leaving California for Texas... while California is about to be, if it already isn't, the 4th largest economy in the world.
https://www.independent.co.uk/... [independent.co.uk]
Musk may have left for Texas, but people are still trying hand-over-fist to start their businesses here.
The exiting strategies I'm speaking of are for other places in San Francisco, or the East Bay, not moving their headquarters out of state. There are cheaper places to have a small office in SF other than in th
Re: (Score:2)
BS.
While their economy is doing well, it's not new businesses nor median or low income households that are performing well. They have a huge homeless problem because people are having a hard time finding work in general. It's only established businesses, and those already having a high gross, which are performing well. So yeah, Musk left, but if other large businesses leave then it would be a tragedy since they're carrying California's economy.
Nowhere in your article does it say that "people are hand-over-f
Re: (Score:1)
Consider Spotify where it seems many of their employees seem to post at least 10 tweets a day during their local work hours. And this isn't influencer things. They're posting recipes and such.
Many people are hired for precisely the wrong reason, for example... Never hire a creative person to do something they've done before. They'll use forever and waste time. Yet Companies everywhere hire for creative positions creative people to si
Re: (Score:2)
This all assumes the people making the decisions have perfect information (in the economic sense) and are completely rational actors.
https://www.psychologytoday.co... [psychologytoday.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
>> Data please, and as a overall whole not just one cherry picked industry
How about you prove the inverse for me to take your initial claim seriously? What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence, respectfully. Your saying that RTO improves productivity and quality of life for the employee, so prove it. Because Harvard studies proved otherwise, google it.
>> Oh ...
Approximately about N%, where N is equal to a dynamic value of the type that if I had been entrusted
Re: (Score:3)
>> Data please, and as a overall whole not just one cherry picked industry
How about you prove the inverse for me to take your initial claim seriously? What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence, respectfully. Your saying that RTO improves productivity and quality of life for the employee, so prove it. Because Harvard studies proved otherwise, google it.
>> Oh ...
Approximately about N%, where N is equal to a dynamic value of the type that if I had been entrusted with it, I would also have enough respect not to disclose it, as that's sensitive HR data and I would not want be the dumb person who leaked that as in many states that would be a crime and would probably get you canceled at work by HR pretty fast.
This is quite possibly one of the dumbest retorts I've ever read...
Re: (Score:2)
It's right on target. The OP "argued" in person work produces better outcomes. So he should prove it.
Here's a simple counterpoint. A large percentage of companies, especially in tech which is relevant here, had RECORD profits during the pandemic when everyone worked remotely. The evidence on that is pretty clear. Saying people should go back to the way things were before for collaboration is unprofessional when working remotely produces better profits.
Re: At some point (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This is Slashdot, we strive for excellence in our foolishness
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
You forgot to check the post anonymously box there, thanks. Now we know who's been posting all the creimer spam.
Re: (Score:2)
ooh, sockpuppet moderation, too (Score:2)
Thanks for letting me know I sank your battleship, bitch.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:At some point (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe, if the managers suck or it's a particular type of work.
My company has actually been doing so well with remote working since the pandemic that we're going from 3 days in the office to 2 starting next month.
And this is a company that shot down any talk of remote work for a decade before the pandemic. Turns out, some people will work very hard to produce results if you let them avoid a horrible commute.
Re: (Score:1)
There's a massive different between fully remote and hybrid.
Working from home allows me to make confidential phone calls without having to jump into an office to make them. It allows me to have confidential things on my screen without worrying if someone walking behind me will see. It allows me to get on with stuff without distractions.
However - working from home means I don't get the feel for how my team is doing. If there are issues / questions they can't just be shouted out. If someone is getting fru
Re: (Score:3)
I worked for a company that went fully-remote a few years before COVID hit. They used to have an office, then started to allow hybrid working, and then decided that they didn't need their office at all. (Granted, it was a small company... less than 20 people.)
I joined after they'd been fully remote for at least 5 years, and there were no issues with productivity, keeping up with the team, etc. It worked well.
Re: (Score:3)
However - working from home means I don't get the feel for how my team is doing. If there are issues / questions they can't just be shouted out.
Some people emulate this open office style work environment by just keeping a Zoom bridge permanently open. If you're not on a call you can choose to join the bridge, it's just like talking out loud in an open office to your peers around you. In Zoom (and other services I assume) you can also use break out rooms to have more detailed discussions without bothering the larger group, kind of like a couple people walking off to a meeting room when in the office. And most people do not leave their cameras on
Re: (Score:2)
If there are issues / questions they can't just be shouted out.
Thank goodness. My work is not interrupted by people shouting out their questions.
But fully time at home - never.
Strange, it worked for me for 10 years. And 90% WFH is still working great.
Re: (Score:2)
It depends on the type of employee.
I have some that work harder at home (I am that type as I see it as a privalge and don't want to screw it up.) I have others that disappear for long periods of time, don't respond to IMs until an hour or more later, and pretty much do everything but work while at home. Sure, you can manage those people out of a job, but when they were doing a great job in office, it's a shame to do that.
Some people also do not have the room at their home to create an effeicent workplace.
My
Re: (Score:3)
I got an engineer fresh out of school, no one in the company even knows what he looks like... keeps sending files by email (FFS we have a document system, but I digress) and its absolute garbage, we send back feedback and it just keeps going on and on, since last damn April. This is a situation where, if we could get the guy to show up to one of our engineering offices we could show and mentor the guy in an afternoon, but no fuckin April!
This isn't a WFH problem: it's a shit manager problem. JFC, if you can't get this guy on the ball after two or three attempts, then either he's not being properly trained or managed, or he needs to go. That the manager has put up with this since April suggests that s/he doesn't know what they're doing.
Re: (Score:2)
For a lot of jobs, it is difficult to fire someone. I live in Texas but outside of minium wage jobs, I have never worked for a company that doesn't put a hundred barries to terminate an employee. Most even tie your bonus in with employee retention and count people fired as the same as people quitting.
Re: (Score:2)
I suspect it varies by industry and by company. My company has collected metrics on remote work since the beginning of the pandemic. By our metrics, things like bug close rates and code coverage, we're doing better than we were in 2020. More importantly, upper management are getting their "top 5" emails from front line managers more consistently and on time. Turns out all these low-level bosses are jumping on their email at 7-8pm to get their status out to the big bosses. The individual contributors are hap
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Get fucked fascists! (Score:2)
He's either an evil genius or he's a dumbass who shot his own eye out. He can't be both at once.