Meta Requires Office Workers To Return To Desks Three Days a Week - Slashdot
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Meta Requires Office Workers To Return To Desks Three Days a Week
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All in office jobs means you will be watched 24/7 likely by AI-enhanced cameras. Smile. Be Happy. You are working.
The irony of the metaverse developers required to be in an office must have flown right over Zuckerberg.
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Yeah, if only Meta had some way to get people face-to-face over the Internet...
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It's much easier than that. Actual cameras aren't necessary at all. In their offices, employees have to expect some superior entering in person any time of day. And some managements firmly believe that only that can assure that their wage slaves actually do work. It's pathetic, but that has been how dependent employment worked in capitalism ever since, and, plus that they'll *add* more and more sophisticated surveillance tech at their leisure as soon as it becomes available, that's how it will continue to b
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You think people at home are more efficient and effective in general?
If you believe that then you believe Zuckerberg wants to pay lots of real estate fees to have a less efficient business....
Uh huh....
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Zuckerberg has already paid lots of real estate fees, and now needs to justify them.
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You know that businesses don't rent month-to-month, right?
Facebook has acres of leased space that is going completely unused while everyone is working from home. Even more now that they've had all their firings.
They very likely want to actually get some use from those leases, where they can't just break them and get out.
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You think people at home are more efficient and effective in general?
Studies seem to bear that conclusion out to be true.
During the pandemic, efficiency rose with all these folks working from home.
While I know SOME jobs require you to be in person, for the most part in IT...I have a hard time thinking of any position that HAS to be done in an office in person....aside from a server floor person needing to be hands on with hardware.
If someone is slacking off at home...they'll be slacking off at the offic
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During the pandemic, efficiency rose because there was literally nothing to do other than work at first.
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Not when they also slashed their product line intended to facilitate this.
Honestly I think those calls are premature, Meta is giving up at the pace of the tech industry without realizing the real world is far behind that. Most managers running Teams meetings aren't yet aware they could have avatars with live real motion and facial expressions in a virtual office space; that they could put a stop to people ghosting during the day. Hell even in tech it's taken a little explaining to get managers to understand
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If I'm going to be on stinking camera, isolated in my stinking apartment all stinking day, I'd rather just go in, work in person, and have some real human interaction. Also, I love public transit and am happy to help support it. SAVE! OUR! TRAINS!
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If you're going to devalue a human worker like that, then a chatbot can easily replace the entire HR department.
Wonder what happens when it's the entire HR industry struggling to avoid being "involuntarily separated" in order to keep the human in resources...
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I'm sure the HR team in charge of this decision had to come up with an option to increase "organic attrition:" getting people to quit.
When your CEO literally says some people will have to be "managed out," it gives HR a mandate to find things to make workers uncomfortable and/or change their working situation in ways they will not like. In such a way, you can get 5-20% "attrition" of people leaving voluntarily, with no impact to unemployment rates, severances, etc etc.
It's some Sun Tzu x Machiavelli stuff. This is the real world of "Lean In" -- say nice things to help you personal brand or make the company seem benevolent to its workers, and then behave completely ruthlessly.
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Unions. If they had a Union their Union would put a stop to this.
But you can't just unionize Facebook. Otherwise they'll just bring in scabs from somewhere else. You need a large, national Union so that when Facebook goes looking for scabs there aren't any. Also you need that large national union so that when Facebook brings in a multi-million dollar law firm to Union bust you have an equally powerful organization to stand up to it.
The unions didn't turn to the mob because they were corrupt. They tu-
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if you're looking to quickly find like minded people for a hobby it's great. A buddy of mine finds all his fishing buddies and trips that way.
When it's used as an actual social network, well, it works. I'm an introvert so I'm not all that interested, but if for some reason I wanted to get out there and do stuff Facebook would make it easy to do that.
The downside is all the data abuse, but we could fix that tomorrow with a handful of laws and regulation. Facebook's profits would go down but they'd su-
It used to work. These days, try to post "Hey who wants to do (xyz)" on a Friday afternoon... and watch how many people say on Monday "man this JUST came up in my feed, I wish I'd known!"
Or try to set up an event for a friend's surprise birthday party, and notice yourself getting down-dinged in reach because... wait for it... you sent out TOO MANY invitations to YOUR OWN FRIENDS LIST for your even without paying the "promote me" fee.
The enshittification cycle has completed [wired.com], and Facebook is dying out sl
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> I don't really want to see a return of the Mob, so instead I want to bring enough raw political power that the suits don't feel like they can use violence and intimidation.
Isnâ(TM)t that just kind of outsourcing the mob?
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I look forward to seeing men with Fb jackets pointing mini guns at developers.
You're so fucking hilarious. Thank you for being here every day.
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That's a very motivated misreading of the parent post
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Yeah, because things haven't changed AT ALL since the 1930s when it comes to labor laws. Or firearm laws. Or what is deemed acceptable in an age of mass media and instant global publishing of live video.
I mean, what a hysterical view of the world you have where you think that Zuckerberg is going to have hired goons with machine guns busting up a labor brawl outside their offices in Menlo Park. Are there 11 year olds running around in patched tweed trying to sell newspapers in this vision too?
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Actually, a properly-run union would be clamoring for a return to real work, not "cower at home." Remember, a lot of workers' jobs depend on there being physical facilities.
Notice that heavily unionized countries (most of Europe) have been quicker to return to in-person work than the United States of Austerity.
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People tend to forget that organized crime and gangs are an effect, not a cause, of markets. When they state is not serving a segment and there is pent up demand, someone will start providing.
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Maybe you're wrong and, enhanced on-site laundry, day-care, meals, happy hours, gym facilities with yoga plus expansive outdoor parks along with private commuter busses, (with corporate wifi), to the more affordable suburbs are part of the deal. Then again, maybe those perks are not on offer and you are correct.
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All those perks were always part of the Machiavellian calculations. Notably, it costs far less to hire laundry workers, day care workers, kitchen staff, yoga instructors and landscapers than it does per hour for tech workers, especially savvy engineers. So, you offer these perks so those folks can pour even more of their time into work, often totaling 12-16 hours a day. You don't have to pay the engineers in California for this -- they're all "exempt" from overtime. So you get an extra.5x-1x a high-en
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Thing is, if they work from home, boundaries between "office time" and "me time" get more and more blurred, and they're expected to put in longer hours.
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Public transit is a public good and needs commuters to support it. SAVE! OUR! TRAINS! Lovely trains.
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Yes, the stock has tripled lately and people are going to leave the company over going to the office which they were doing every day of the week when they were hired.
3 days a week is totally reasonable.-
As I understand it, FB has a lot of turnover; there's probably a very large cohort that got hired after the pandemic lockdowns and never did the "every day of the week" thing.
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Omg, it's soooo horrible working for a FANG company where a developer can easily pull down 500k+ a year in RSU, stocks, cash and other benefits!
And they have great offices packed full of free food, yoga class, and the works! And when asked to come in three whole days per week to this hell hole they are going to quit and gun down some FB execs over the cruelty they had to endure!!!!
Omg, fucking babies. No one is gunning down anyone. Get over it. We live in the easiest times ever for humanity's entire exi
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Congratulations, you've bought into the propaganda! You think working at one of these companies is a breeze, instead of being in a constant state of "fight or flight" mode anxiety. Those devs get paid $500k because they are either 1) very specialized and incredible at what they do and hard to replace, or more commonly 2) get worked like a dog to the point of burnout when they are summarily replaced. See my above comment explaining how those "perks" are just there to increase the bottom line.
. Not to say w
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We live in the easiest times ever for humanity's entire existence..
You should read this article [mit.edu], which notes your opinion is one of "capitalism's most enduring myths." While the industrial revolution was the worst for workers, Americans still work a lot more today virtually every other era of history.
And that's the workers..if you want to compare the gentry, let's say anyone VP and above at Meta...they work a lot more than the landed gentry of old.
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Yup - this was done at Apple and basically the same thing - 3 days a week in office regardless if you need to be there or not. I get that hardware in development needs labs and physical equipment not found elsewhere. Software - not so much, and anyone not directly working on hardware projects. I can be cynical and point out that Apple didn't do lay-offs because instead they forced the 3-day a week thing and that had the intended consequences of attrition - usually of the wrong people though as those who are
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Sun Tzu and Machiavelli would never have been so stupid as to keep the dross that has no alternatives and motivate anybody competent to leave.
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Sun Tzu would have executed anyone abandoning their post.
Machiavelli did not command an army of any sort.
But if you want to adhere to the Sun Tzu model then instead of giving notice you can get a spear through your gut and bleed out. How's that sound?
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I take it you have not actually read Sun Tzu. I highly recommend you do.
So? This is about organizations, not armies. You may want to refer to the posting I am answering to. Machiavelli certainly had a lot of experience with those.
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You probably aren't wrong. If they get people to quit, then they don't have to pay severance, unemployment, equity vesting, etc. So instead of paying people to go away - which they've already done a lot of - they'll instead just make them miserable until they go away on their own.
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True. Of course, longer-term they are destroying their company. But I think that process is well underway anyways for Meta.
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A somewhat cynical friend of mine says HR's job is to tune pay and benefits to get attrition at the level the company wants. I doubt anyone in HR thinks about it that explicitly but that's got to be part of the calculation. The other pars is you need the right mix of employees.
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I believe the mandatory return to office 3 days a week at my company was to create natural attrition. Since April very few people have left. With tech companies laying people off all over the place I can see why people are staying with the devil they know for now.
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Dell's policy is that if you have upto a one-hour commute, you should work in the office three days a week. Managers have a lot of flexibility, meaning there's no enforcement at this time. We still have to check out a cube (upto a month in advance), and we don't have any place to leave personal stuff, so it's the worst of both worlds.
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It's interesting that the reason given to make people get back to office at least 3 days a week is to foster "the collaboration, relationships and culture necessary for employees to do their best work."
So, workers with remote positions achieve the same collaboration, relationships and culture without even going 3 days a week? Because I don't think Meta will imply that those remote workers do not do their best work.-
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So, when a company literally selling the virtual office as the future Workerworld, demands you risk life and limb jumping in a gasoline-powered car to further poison yourself and the planet for the purposes of justifying overpaid cube farmers to police children in a place where they (allegedly) hire grown-ass adults in order to support a virtual world, I'm assuming a valid response to that level of hypocrisy and arrogance would include death by bitch slap. In front of a live audience. On pay per view.
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Meta is just honoring the terms of the agreement with those specific people who were hired on the premise that they would work remotely.
That's not the case of most employees - they were not hired to be remote, and they have a salary for the Bay Area.
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You think those guys aren't working 7 days a week for more hours a day than any of their staff? You don't understand how successful big name CEOs operate. They never leave work. They can be fucking their mistress and they're thinking about work. They dream in work. On vacation they are still working. I'm lazy, the last thing I'd want is to be a CEO. Those guys live and breathe nothing but work. It's their entire existence.
You picked the wrong theme.
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The headline makes it sound like META is making people return to the office but the summary makes clear this only impacts people who already go into the office. Basically it gives hybrid flexibility to current deskbound staff.
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Commercial real estate is the lynch pin investment of the wealthy in this country and that real estate as well as the personal home values of those in the valley crashes when people have no need for commercial real estate or to live in the valley.
Ultimately working in VR in shared spaces would kill all business case for having people return to office for virtually every job but doing so would kill the personal real estate investments of everyone in management from the middle up. The shareholders should sue.
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Shareholders almost certainly have similar investments whether they're funds or individuals wealthy enough to have substantial stakes in Meta et al.
We're being fucked over by the superrich with the anti-WFH thing. Somehow we have to reduce their influence, but in a country that takes the notion of Jamie Dimon running as the Presidential candidate for America's "to the left of the other party" party, we're not likely to see it.
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Lol, you think Zuckerberg gives a flying fuck about commercial real estate or the home values near his offices?
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Maybe, but it's also a major expenditure for businesses. These folks aren't the kind of "I'll waste a ton of money to prop up this sector for my rich buddies' sake". If they can save a pile of money by going fully virtual with no downside they'll do it.
Certainly, Meta owns it's main campus but I'm guessing most of the rest was leased. If they could cut that lease cost that would make them a lot more money.
If only there were a major software company that had literally renamed itself on the belief that everyo
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VR/metaverse crap = nausea city. Welcome to motion-sick HELL. Also, I don't really want to be on stinkin' camera in my own God damned home.
I don't even have surveillance cameras, and I treat my cell phone like a landline.
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Not just in the private sector, but transitioning downtowns into commercial-RE havens has been a decades-long implicit policy of urban planning in America, I mean since WWII or maybe even WWI. The reason is that commercial tenants pay big taxes, and don't demand many amenities (parks, schools, environments that aren't soul-crushing dystopias, heck big business tenants don't even care about street crime so much). From the perspective of a municipality, in contrast people actually living in your downtown are
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Because that will be happening. Anybody competent can get an online or at least mostly WFH job these days, and the employers offering that are the only ones that get enough applications from competent people. The competent people that want to work in an office will leave soon after, because the whole work environment will go to hell.
Incidentally, ist this the same "Meta" that wants people to work in the "Metaverse"? Talk about an abysmally stupid move...
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I can make 500k+ in total comp as a FB dev and go in a few days a week or I can work at a WFH startup and make 180k cash with limited hope my stock options are ever worth anything.
Any rational adult would take the 500k. If they were already so rich they didn't need the 500k then they should retire and enjoy life.
Only a fucking baby would take a 60% cut to work in his underwear at home surrounded by his action figures.
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And how many people do you think are getting $500k at Meta as devs? I know one pretty exceptional person that got $250k at Google, but that was not the rule even there. With a bit of research, it looks like Meta gives about $150k in total compensation for the average developper.
Also, what makes you think WFH is a "startup" thing? You seem to be a bit disconnected from observable reality.
Of course, if you make the numbers up (as you obviously did), you can draw support any arbitrary statement with them.
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Here's the problem with your bullshit: you seem to think that everyone at Facebook makes half a million a year in total compensation, which is obviously a stupid assertion on it's face.
The support idiots don't make $500k/yr.
The junior devs don't make $500k/yr.
The front-line managers don't make $500k/yr.
The accountants and HR droids don't make $500k/yr.
The marketing weasels don't make $500k/yr.
The janitors, admin assistants, and other ancillary support staff (telephone sanitizers) don't make $500k/yr.That's
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Meh, I want an in-person real job, not an isolate-at-home lonelyjob. Work from home = SUFFERING!
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I guess you are one of the people that go to the office not to produce results but to socialize. I can understand you feel very threatened by WFH. With more WFH, it will become very obvious who is what.
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Fortunately, I'm an EU dual citizen. If lonelystuck/cowardly "work" becomes the norm in the United Stinks, welp, most of the EU holds a more conservative view on the "new normal." Thank God I have options.
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What techbros on here don't get is that ALL human activity is social. In countries without a strong Proddie work ethic that infests the "Land of the Free", it's understood to be OK for work to be social AS WELL AS productive.
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Nope, it is not. Seriously. It may seem to _you_ like that, and it will seem like that to many other people, but not everybody is that limited.
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I've been a part of this at a few companies before. When they do these stunts, they give the key players lots of non-vested options, promotions, stock grants, bonuses, raises, etc. So your star team keeping your cash-maker running? Their managers already met with them and told them about their new promotion and asked them what it would take to retain them. If they are trying to stimulate attrition, they've bribed the recognized contributors and are hoping the others voluntarily leave to cut costs.
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Well, then they keep the Rock-Stars and the dross. Does not strike me as a good strategy either. For many things it is those with more average skills that keep things running.
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Companies need to figure out how much real-estate they need moving forward. It's not hard to understand why a company might say that they are going to hold a dedicated space (e.g. a desk, or an office, etc) for you in the office only if you commit to using it sufficiently frequently. Meta thinks 3 days a week is sufficiently frequently; that's roughly 150 days per year or roughly twelve days per month. While one could quibble about whether 3 days a week is too much, too little, or just right, the basic pri
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QUIT! You can be replaced easily.
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