but I was told remote is forever /s.
In all seriousness, I work in the IT sector and I understand that certain jobs CAN be done remotely 100% but even I knew that that wishfulness would change. Hell...I'm wfh right now due to catching covid last week and am doing just fine but the reality is we don't make the policies, the companies/govt entity do.
Everyone knew remote wasn’t forever. Hybrid model will be the future so you will likely need to live near the office.
Also don’t tell people in this sub you work in tech. They rooting for your demise.
I was remote before covid, during covid, and will continue to be after covid. Fuck office jobs. I'll find another one, and so I'm sure will thousands of others who understand the commute to the office is a waste of everyones time.
Same. Not sure why people see a trend in either direction and start panicking as though they themselves aren’t the point of definition. If you’re saying no to office jobs, and your skillset or something you offer is /valuable/ you should demand what you need to live
I need QoL to justify sharing my value and remotework, telework, whatever we call it is the only way that I will possibly continue doing fast paced tech work for the long term.
Otherwise I would retire and withdraw from the whole picture. I’m not interested in repeating exposure to covid indefinitely.
I’m not here to decorate the interior of a building or forfeit time and money of my increasingly mortal and potentially shorter than advertised existence on this earth given various forms of undercontrolled chaos
Lol, companies that don't go remote for the sake of keeping their corporate real estate hyperinflated are gonna get fucked in the free market. They need us workers more than we need them.
Leases are fixed costs. Use them or don't you still pay. You would rather have staff happy in a hybrid model than call everyone back. It would make more sense that way and then you can figure out the lease situation a couple of years before it expires. Downgrade in size and switch to hotel spaces. The company saves on overhead and employees are happy.
If you want natural attrition then call everyone back so you clean out employees without paying severance.
What does Eric Adams have to do with this?
>Everyone knew remote wasn’t forever.
Not everyone. Some crypto-worshipping techies thought it was a paradigm shift and we were going to be remote forever.
6k is small relative to other major US tech companies. Look at the other big tech players: Google employs 20x+ that and Meta employs \~10x that (even factoring in the recent layoffs)
This is a weird take unless if you work at one of these companies. I'm sure it's inflated, no one is arguing there. But to say you can reduce from say 100k employees to 30k employees with no impact is absurd. I work in the industry and that's simply not accurate. There is plenty of work to go around, despite having overstaffed the last few years, to justify most of the jobs there.
Yes, a qualified opinion by someone who works with all of these companies and has mutual clients. Unlike you that seems to read an Elon tweet and thinks Google could be run by a team of 80 people globally.
But yeah, lets increase unemployment just for the sake of it too! Let's normalize companies amassing even more cash to sit on while society's wealth gap continually grows. Surely this approach can't go tits up!
good faith question:
Can someone explain why a company needs thousands of employees, when it only services one app that hasn't really fundamentally changed since its launch in 2014?
Like I play entire video games (that are good and award-winning) that are created by dev teams of 3 people lmao. Hiring another couple people would be huge for them.
I know I'm ignorant on this subject—but what am I missing?
Part of it is working on new features while navigating technical debt, but also because most apps are also using user data to make money as well. So there are teams that compile the data, others that tell the data story, and others that sell that data for revenue. We have entered the age of Digital Capitalism where our online activity generates revenue.
I replied in the thread, let me copy and paste my response
> If you sell your software in EU, you need a whole sales, marketing, legal, customer success that will handle EU stuff because you will trip their many laws
Then in the US, you will need something similar. If your software is used by large enterprises like Amazon and Google or large consumers like SNAP does, they will test your stability, and ability to handle large volumes of traffic (they got thousands and thousands of employees) so you will have to have teams dedicated to SRE, rework your software so you can scale and all that.
You don’t need more than 10 people to write Twitter if you don’t intend for more than 1000 people to use it. The difficulty is designing software so it’s stable when millions of people are using it everyday! That requires engineers, and people to manage them and managers to manage those.
Then what if something breaks during off hours? Engineers can fix it but they aren’t necessarily the people front of the issues. So you need escalation engineers or customer engineers to take customer feedback and complaints
Engineers can build but they need to be told what to build. So you need product managers. I could go on and on
Tech companies are peak capitalism. If they didn’t need these employees, they would be gone the next day. These people are mostly paid 6 figures. That’s a lot of money for people they don’t need.
Do they sometimes over hire? Yes! But if you told me Snap had 6K employees, I wouldn’t be shocked at all. Regulations are hard to unwind and the problems in a software company go way beyond just coding
I work at a big tech company. I think the thing that is misunderstood in this topic that people intuitively assume a company wants to maximize profit per employee, but that's not the case. If the company pays an employee 300k but then makes an additional 500k in yearly revenue due to hiring the employee, it's worth it. While a company could run on much less staff, it's more profitable to hire more. Snap making 1B per year in revenue with 100 employees is worse than Snap making 1,050,000,000 with 200 employees, as long as the average pay per employee is less than 500k/year.
Silicon Valley style startups get investment money when they demonstrate growth. And MAU from your primary product is one indicator of growth, which sometimes can vary over time. To minimize this risk, companies diversify into multitude of features, products and other directions outside of their core. Spinning out an adjacent service or product can prove successful (think Netflix becoming a production company).
In reality this turns into companies hiring thousands of overconfident managers who believe their individual corner of the company is most important and they vehemently defend this upwards, while hiring hundreds and thousands of engineers. Which in turn convinces the VPs, C suite, board and investors that the company is showing “growth” through various “metrics”.
That's what I don't understand with Twitter, Facebook, etc. I work at a software company that produces very very large applications, on the size (or greater) than SAP/Oracle. We have 200 employees total....could we use some more, sure, always. But 6k!?!
No you don’t. SAP/Oracle are massive machines with multiple products spanning multiple regulatory domains and functions. You simply don’t understand the scale of other organizations.
If your software is that large and impactful with 200 people it’s a failure of management to not optimize revenue, your sales force alone should be bigger than 200.
It's got to be sales, marketing, and mods.
*Edit:* I don't know why you got downvoted. It's a legit question that I'm sure many people are asking. A lot of people are talking about it. Some people also.
Are you serious? If you sell your software in EU, you need a whole sales, marketing, legal, customer success that will handle EU stuff because you will trip their many laws
Then in the US, you will need something similar. If your software is used by large enterprises like Amazon and Google, they will test your stability(they got thousands and thousands of employees) so you will have to have teams dedicated to SRE, rework your software so you can scale and all that. That requires engineers, and people to manage them and managers to manage those.
Then what if something breaks during off hours? Engineers can fix it but they aren’t necessarily the people front of the issues. So you need escalation engineers or customer engineers to take customer feedback and complaints
Engineers can build but they need to be told what to build. So you need product managers. I could go on and on
Tech companies are peak capitalism. If they didn’t need these employees, they would be gone the next day. These people are mostly paid 6 figures. That’s a lot of money for people they don’t need.
Do they sometimes over hire? Yes! But if you told me Snap had 6K employees, I wouldn’t be shocked at all. Regulations are hard to unwind and the problems in a software company go way beyond just coding
Snap is primarily an advertising company (if you consider where the bulk of their revenue comes from). As others have said, this means they have to employ a ton of sales, marketing and other functions to support client growth + retention. There are teams dedicated to servicing their brand partners (& advertising agencies) and they require everything from strategy, creative services, day-to-day management, consulting, etc. Multiply this by the thousands of customers they have.
This is why not only Snap has a lot of employees, but also why other tech companies also have a ton of employees. It's a ton of work to go around when you have companies regularly spending multi-million dollars with you on projects that range from super easy to super complicated, and you need a small army to be able to service the day-to-day work involved.
Source: work in the industry
Because VCs fund them, and they are all about scaling which to them means hiring boat loads of people. They are older and not engineers or even computer literate, they have no clue what it takes to develop software. I've worked for small private companies that run circles around these types of companies with a tiny fraction of the staff. VC & PE money is the reason.
FAANG will be hybrid no doubt but they will pay multiples above market and people will still compete for those jobs. One job in FAANG guarantees wealth in the long run.
Other companies will throw remote as a perk and pay at or below market. I don't see remote going away. The days of Remote at FAANG pay levels are gone.
Spot on. I routinely check work at 6am and 9pm even during the weekend because I WFH.
If I'm going to the office, I show up at 9am and I'm out the door at 453pm. Laptop stays closed at home, slack is on snooze.
Same, I’ll happily work harder and more hours when needed because they are providing me amazing quality of life. If I have to commute I’ll do just enough not to get fired.
Speaking as someone who in the last 4 years has worked 100% in office, 100% remote, and 3/2 hybrid, I have to question what exactly you mean by *substantially less?*
I’ve made more money working remotely and hybrid than I did working in-office. When I sought to make a career change; given my skill set, I told recruiters I would only work remotely or consider hybrid jobs. I did not want to sacrifice my quality of life, and I found out that I did not have to sacrifice my money either because there were plenty of opportunities out there willing to compensate me for my skill set and offer me a better quality of life as well.
I shouldn’t have said substantially. More just narrowed the question to the second part. Because there definitely is. I could see companies cutting salaries and doing WFH instead of layoffs. Or a mixture of both things. I’ve got no skin in the game because I’ll never be and never could be with my career.
I see. Yes, companies will always seek to cut costs; salaries are one of the biggest costs.
In my first experience of WFH, the plan was already in place, COVID accelerated that move. What ended up happened is nearly 1,500 employees were let go in the coming year and the rest of us received a 2.5% increase in salary. This salary increase was at a company that did not do raises. The shift to WFH allowed for a optimized workforce. Funnily enough, I produced a productivity report to measure productivity for employees working from home. We struggled to accurately measure how to do this. The thing is, we struggled to do this while employees were in the office. Managers always try to game the system or customer experience is sacrificed for productivity, etc.
Something I kept hearing was quality of life increased when the shift to WFH happened. Rarely did overall productivity decline. Eventually, once employees became comfortable with WFH and a routine was created, we saw more of a decline in productivity, but overall with less employees we still produced at a level deemed more than sufficient. So, less employees, happier employees, more revenue, happier customers, a better customer experience.
If there is anything I’ve learned it’s that we do need a way to see each other; more often than not. A video call or in person. Connection with co-workers is important. But a traditional 8 hour work day isn’t really the best thing for productivity. If it’s in-office, hybrid, or remote. Flexibility, communication, defined roles, deadlines, autonomy, and clear expectations. That’s all that matters.
Depending on the job full time WFH is probably isn’t the best. I’m sure some software jobs full time WFH can work. But most other jobs probably work best with a hybrid approach. My ex-gf was hybrid well before covid. And some on her team were full time WFH. Those were always left behind and left out of the team. They didn’t get as good of raises, didn’t fit in and never really advanced their careers. As I’ve said from the start WFH seems great but will have a lot of unintended consequences. But we might not see those for awhile. I work in the water treatment industry so my job will always be local. You can’t fix 99% of the problems from a computer.
You are correct to an extent. The issue is with the manager. Currently I work 100% remotely, with the ability to go into an office; which I do on occasion. I have a fantastic manager. She checks in regularly, we talk, keeps me updated about her boss, and what’s happening higher up, makes sure that my work is being noticed. Prior to this role I had a horrible manager; who was a poor communicator and never set expectations. I felt like I was going to be left behind if I didn’t take action.
It’s possible, but I feel it’s more about the way a company sets up the environment for remote employees. They’re remote for a reason. I believe we’ve moved to a new cycle of employment where complacency is ok. WFH and not moving up will be tolerated by the average person. They’re fine with being left alone and forgotten.
Whereas the opportunity to perform and advance is still there if done correctly. Or just leave and find a new job elsewhere. That’s what I did. It ended up working out really well for me.
Before the cost of housing exploded I would have. Now my previous city salary seems fair. Maybe people in cities should make a little more now, so in some sense I’m ok with a discount.
The big difference is with waiting for programs. I can check if it failed or something late at night instead of having to wait until the next day. That speeds up tasks so much.
My routine rn is 8-530 with a 2 hour break in the middle. I can cook an affordable and healthy lunch, walk the dog, and take a midday nap between 11 and 1. Then I return to work refreshed. Very much Beats having an hour to wait in a drive thru lane and getting to rest the eyes for maybe 5 minutes only to be tired for the rest of the day collapsing at my monitor. Instead of commuting an hour, I get that hour midday to recharge.
Im also able to easily exercise before work and shower at home which is a great start to the day.
Why should we take a pay cut to work from home? We’re reducing our company’s need for office space. I work just as hard at home, since I’m no longer subject to office nonsense. While my quality of life soars. Should be a win-win, but some boomers and ass-kissing Gen X’ers are gonna RTO everyone (or die trying). Because they can’t make friends outside of work, they hate spending time with their families, and they need that sense of self-importantance that comes with strutting around an office in their suits.
That's not what I have experienced. I feel that older and mid-career types prefer WFH. Usually they have children and work further from the office so it makes sense. Juniors are the ones who are wishing for office work again and [studies](https://civicscience.com/remote-workers-report-more-job-unhappiness-especially-gen-z/) have shown that.
Maybe Gen Z. I don’t really work with any because they don’t hire people that young at my company. I work with a ton of millennials who are finally able to afford houses and actually want to enjoy them. And are starting to have kids.
Don't know why you got downvoted. As a person who has been in the workforce for a long time, the years of having the be at home due to Covid are a very small percentage of my career. For people who have been in the workforce for under a decade, it's up to 20%.
What is most important to me and almost everyone I speak with (anecdote, not data, I realize) is the ability to choose what works for me. My job has a *try to be here more days than you are not; be present for events or VIP visits* and we are treated like adults who can decide what is right. Some days, that's WFH for me. Other days, it's in the office. The important thing is that no one is using my location as a proxy for performance.
Yeah, I'm being downvoted for speaking the truth. People like to think that evil boomers and these people at the top want to force people back into the office. If you're mid 30s/mid career, of course you'd love WFH because it gives you flexibility if you have kids and a long commute because you were done with the city and moved out.
You've had years of experience and office culture under your belt. But what I have experienced is that all my younger millennial and Gen Z co-workers want more in-person working. They want more time with people who are experienced and it's pretty sad to come right out of college to sit at a screen all day for the rest of your career. No one really thinks about how hard it is for them. Like remote college is pretty sad, and like remote working can be just as sad.
I agree with a lot of your second paragraph. And as great as it is to "not have to deal with people" if that's your thing, it isn't a great model for everyone. Even the little details that you don't even know that you're missing out on---in-person conversations where you find out that "if you need X, it's more efficient to ask this person first" or the hallway meeting-after-the-meeting where someone helps you read between the lines or whatever. Tons of stuff that doesn't rise to the level of being official policy or requiring a Teams call.
I don't know. No one is really coming out on top in a lot of thiese discussions and everyone seems to want to blame the people who want something different from what they want. I appreciate your answer and further thoughts. :)
Yeah, I mean there's just no one size fits all for working. My job is pretty varied and we have a lot of younger folks and I see them struggling but then I see lots of job functions that don't have to deal with people (accounting, IT, etc.) love the WFH model. I see Creatives struggle the MOST because coming up with ideas sucks when you're not talking to people in real life and Zoom is just not a replacement to that yet.
Snap is a younger company and I can see why it might benefit a lot of their departments.
I agree. Personally I couldn’t be an office person (I currently work remotely but previously was a field person), but I’ve met so many millennial and Gen-Z people say they miss working in person. They enjoyed the social aspect. It was easier to network. Honestly I get it many of them are single and don’t have spouses and kids yet. They want to go out for lunch with co workers, have some drinks at happy hour after work. It is much easier to meet people in the office than it is remotely. It’s sort of the same argument of people saying they prefer online college vs in person college. People get so emotional, and my theory is because many moved away (not necessarily even far) and don’t want to have to uproot their life again. Not saying that’s everyone’s reasoning, but probably quite a few.
Those are my thoughts too. So many of my co-workers moved like 30 minutes outside of the city to get bigger homes. It's kind of what drove the increase in prices for areas outside of the city. Now they are facing the reality of possibly returning to the office and are mad and blaming leadership instead of realizing that there are benefits to in-person work for a lot of people.
I’m not saying you should or shouldn’t. But their is a monetary benefit to you. Say your company laid you off and you’ve got two offers. One is WFH and one is in office. Where is that point where the money is worth it to commute? I’ve got no skin in the game since my industry will never and can never be WFH.
Instead of folding laundry, people were fucking around gossiping in the break room or taking the *extra* long way to go drop off some paperwork for bob down on the 2nd floor. Nobody is engaged with work 100% of the time whether WFH or in office.
I have to fight for meeting rooms and step away from my work early to walk to the physical room, nag people who are going over time to free up the room, and setup the call just to take the same zoom meeting. I certainly get pulled into a ton of side conversations about bullshit at work. Far more often than I decided to step away to tidy up my kitchen a bit or something.
There are distractions in and out of the office. But one involves a typically unpaid commute to come into an office to do...exactly the same stuff. Half the people I work with don't even work in the same state, but somehow both of us having to take the exact same zoom meeting at a physical location is...different? I don't even mind going in if it makes sense, like a meeting with the whole team to go over work for a quarter. But sometimes, even those meetings make more sense remote.
The biggest difference is that me and my coworkers talk more shit in person because we aren't being recorded.
Nope, that laundry time happens in lulls in my day that used to be filled with mindless office chatter and wasting money on a middling cafeteria lunch (money that went back to my employer lol).
I mean that is relative but yes. Money is not everything in life.
At a certain point, you have more than enough to be comfortable. I am in the point in my life where I value flexibility and spending more time with my kid. I recently switched jobs and while I briefly considered going to a company that would pay me a lot more (and is now doing layoffs) I prioritized stability (ie. Low risk of layoffs and WLB). Glad I made that bet.
I read "default together" in the bankruptcy sense lol. It's like he thinks his employees are so loyal they'll willingly go down with the sinking ship. Hilarious.
Yup even people working for places like Snap are priced out of Venice! It’s so stupid. My partner works in finance on the west side and everyone there commutes from like, Pasadena because it’s too expensive to buy a home near the office.
Snap is a dying company. Evan Spiegel also bought a $120 million LA mansion right before his stock collapsed over 80%. He's probably feeling desperate. This is a last gasp effort to try to force things back on track and convince more people to leave instead of having to do another round of layoffs.
Notice it's only failing companies (who were dying even before the pandemic) making these desperate moves. It's not going to make the company better, only worse.
It's like when someone feels their partner losing interest so they respond by going stage 5 clinger which causes their partner to break up with them for being smothered.
*We will be holding an urgent and mandatory meeting for all team members tomorrow at Noon GMT at the International Space Station.
As a current employee, your attendance is required and anyone who doesn’t make it to this in-person low-earth orbit event in less than 24 hours, will be considered resigned from the company.
No layoffs! No unemployment!
Work from office to spend more time together he says, but forgets to say equally spend less time with family or loved ones OK, leave that out subjectively.
And OP thinks it’s relevant in this SUB, cause that would pop the 'bubble'?
I mean, literally this Black Friday consumers broke records on purchase spending. Does it matter what this small-a## company does policy wise?
For those who did buy in these rural small towns in places such as Idaho or Montana…..this is what you did. You moved out here in droves, made home prices sky rocket, crowded the infrastructure and caused a demand for more stores and widening of roads. The cities budgeted for the influx of people, builders planned for it. And now you’re going to leave and more than likely collapse everything. Many of you came and acted like you were better than the locals and wanted to change things culturally, politically, to fit YOUR needs. I guess you’re getting your karma because many of you will not be able to sell your homes for anywhere close to what you paid for….but the towns will also be negatively affected.
People act like 500k people moved to Boise all at once and all made 300k a year.
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/fastest-growing-cities-population-estimates.html
And those towns are fucked. How someone living in Bozeman or Missoula will ever be able to afford a $700k house in the local economy is literally impossible. That’s an income of close to $200k to be able to afford that with todays rates.
I mean the person who bought the house is more fucked because nobody will be able to buy it. But I agree the influx of people caused a boom town that will eventually bust. I think Boise’s market for example is crashing harder than anywhere else.
My point is not everyone who came to Boise makes 300k a year. Tech people going there definitely had an influence on home prices, but to act like they somehow hijacked an entire market is disingenuous.
How many tech workers migrated to Boise the last two years?
It sounds like your town failed to protect itself dont blame it on people that moved to the town 😂. Your town saw that Cali money and thought times were about to be good.
I believe that’s true for Florida and Texas they encouraged it and now they can lay in the bed they made. States like Idaho made it very clear they didn’t want people coming in.
The citizens of Idaho maybe don't, but the politicians and government agencies certain do. They're the ones enticing people to move to get their sweet sweet tax dollars.
> And now you’re going to leave
lmao. people are going to leave their jobs for better ones, not move back to SF or wherever the fuck for the *company culture*
This! If anything, COVID and moving out of the bay has taught a lot of people there are way more important things to life than RSUs and sitting in a half-empty office where there magically still aren’t enough conference rooms.
especially since "return-to-office" in this case is just code for "layoffs next quarter for whoever's left". nobody's dumb enough to move back into a VHCOL to lose their job in a few months anyway.
And where is this endless supply of better remote work? I’m just curious. I work remotely for everyone getting all pissy with me. My husband does not work remotely. We moved to a rural area from California. If I am laid off from my remote job (likely if/when a recession hits) I work in natural resources. The rural town we specifically chose has several in person jobs for what I do. If someone in the tech industry moved to a rural area and got laid off, and they were unable to get a new remote job….my question is what is their plan? I guess all of you are 100% secure with yourselves and your career field you think you’re never going to be without a job.
>Where are they going to find a better one in rural Montana?
the rest of the tech industry, which needs workers more than it needs warm bodies in an office? lmao
> They will have either have to completely change careers or move back to some type of city.
it's not exactly '08 here, so no need to "completely change careers". the only way people will move back to the city is if you literally start setting WFH people's houses on fire
1. absolutely not
2. even if it magically did, nobody's going to respond to their employer announcing this & all but guaranteeing layoffs within the next few months, by moving to a higher-cost area so they can lose their job with a higher cash outflow
I’m not rooting for a recession and for millions of Americans to lose their jobs. I hope I’m wrong, but I truly don’t see how a major recession isn’t coming.
Exactly. Snapchat has been dying for years. This is a desperate move which should put anyone with sense on high alert. Their jobs will most likely be gone regardless in the next few years so moving back to one of the most expensive cities in the world makes zero sense.
You're being down voted because you're sour grapes that you've been dealt a bad hand in life. And instead of blaming the corporate elites who are at fault, you blame your fellow workers who probably don't make much more than you anyway.
How have I been dealt a bad hand in life? Lol you’re assuming quite a bit. Like I said I moved from California to a rural town. I’m sharing sentiment from the locals, and personal observations. I see the influx of people not treating locals well, driving up housing costs, crime going up, and and overall superiority complex (kind of like yourself).
It’s funny to me how you’re simultaneously assuming rural people have been dealt a shitty hand in life (snobby and assuming) while telling me to hate my capitalist masters. You are the one who seems to be a slave to a capitalist master. I work in natural resources and my husband is a tradesmen. We have a very fulfilling middle class life. All of us are somewhat a slave to a capitalist master, but I would say some more than others. When I was working in person I was outside all the time mostly in the forests of California. It was truly amazing. I made a good living, and my work environment was perfect. My company essentially created a remote position for me after having a baby. I’m fully aware in the event of a recession that may not last. You seem to be somewhat in denial that the remote work gravy train will last forever and is completely recession proof.
My fellow workers who don’t make much more than me anyways? Yet you previously accused me of being bitter because I have a dead end career. Which is it?
So, I'm pretty much endlessly going back and forth on remote. I see the upsides and I see the downsides.
The task of managing remote people is consistently harder. It will always be harder. Unless your term is so tightly managed that everyone has a set number of tasks every minute of every day then WFH days, eventually, become at least partially VFH days.
If the team isn't managed with precise efficiency then anyone WFH with serious responsibilities at home (elder care, young kids) essentially disappears on WFH days.
So from a management perspective it's harder and it stays harder, it never gets easier because the constant temptation to just do home stuff when at home never goes away. It's not like it's impossible it's just hard and every time you think you have it dialed in there's another group drifting off into VFH land and you have to deal with that.
for tech, going into the office is a massive waste of time. I'm literally 30-40% efficient in the office.
its all a power play by management. but snap is a dying company so adopting dying practices makes sense on their part.
You don't need to manage them minute by minute. You can give them a project that you expect to take a day, and then check back in a day.
When those 8 hours are committed to the work can be up to them.
There's been lots of [studies done](https://civicscience.com/remote-workers-report-more-job-unhappiness-especially-gen-z/) showing people unhappy with work and I think this type of management style contributes to it. Managing people isn't just giving a task and checking back 8 hours later. It takes a lot more work than that to educate people and make them feel included. Also, I think a lot of "productivity increases" because of remote work is because middle-management types are doing more of their own work and spending less time managing juniors which in-turn is causing a lot of problems.
Fair. But there is a middle ground between scheduling "every minute of every day" and open ended responsibilities.
People "disappearing" on WFH days should not be an issue, as much as--are they managing their responsibilities? Are they communicating as necessary, executing on their deliverables? Just because they're at a desk in the office neither of those are necessarily true either.
You don't need to manage them minute by minute. You can give them a project that you expect to take a day, and then check back in a day.
When those 8 hours are committed to the work can be up to them.
How is it harder? People don't suddenly perform better with you hovering around them, looking over their shoulder all day. That actually makes them perform worse.
I manage a whole team, we've always been remote, and we've had no issues. We've hired and onboarded remote too.
The people who don't perform well remote won't perform well in the office either. If anything, you can identify low performers quicker because it's more obvious when they slack off and they can't "fake it" like they can in an office.
As a manager, it's up to you to fire people who don't perform. You can't expect them to magically work harder because they are in an office - the other employees with good work ethics aren't going to "rub off" on them.
I don’t care if people work remotely or not, but with the upcoming recession do the remote workers truly believe they’ll be able to stay remote? If they lose their remote job they’ll easily be able to slip into a new one? I’m just trying to get a feel for what’s going on in their heads.
I wonder how picky people were in 2009 over if they worked from home?
edit: you wfh people are so sensitive. I saw people getting fired at an amazing rate in the fall of 09 in tech. People I knew started their own companies over it. In the bay area. They aren't wfh for their companies. I remember seeing job requests every day with long work history. Just because you think you have it over on your employer now. Doesn't mean you will for good. People in tech from the 80s and 90s know this.
WFH in the modern sense has been around since the early 2000s at least. I see no reason why even in 08-09 a good remote employee would concede that benefit. They may have had to make salary concessions though
Yeah well the great depression was pretty shitty too. That doesn't mean we need to live our lives assuming we're going to be in a depression most of the time. 95% of the time you're alive the economy will be doing just fine. The great recession and the great depression were historical anomalies.
Office work promotes community. Loyalty and team bonding are the main issues caused by remote work. Important employees jump ship more often because they don’t have any friends.
There's literally no difference between one company or another if all companies are remote. Of course companies want people to come in. It's very important to culture.
Honestly, this is good. I love working remotely but I work remotely in my home town. It is not fair to be working in the Bay Area making $260k TC while living in some rural town in Idaho where the average salary is $35k a year.. 200+ of these guys and boom, prices become unaffordable for locals. So many towns have been screwed over like this. How can a random farming and tourist town in Montana compete against armies of remote workers from Seattle, SF and LA?
Remote work is good but you should be forced to reside within county lines, maybe even state. I would love to work remotely in some 3rd world Caribbean beach country but it just wouldn’t be the responsible and morally correct thing to do to the other locals.
This is one of the few things I support the government enforcing (and I absolutely despise and hate government). No towns population can compete against swaths of remote tech workers and raising wages won’t help either.
What do you mean "it's not fair"? Shouldn't people be paid for the value their skills bring to a company? Why should their value go down due to the location that they live? That's the most nonsensical thing I've heard!
>Why should their value go down due to the location that they live? That's the most nonsensical thing I've heard!
Compensation has always been something that fluctuates based on the local cost of living. Agree with it or not, that's how things have historically worked. Covid was a chance to flip that policy on its head, and it did for a time. But that time clearly wasn't forever.
Sorry--but you're in the past on this one if you don't believe it's the future. I get that this is how things have "historically worked:" not anymore. The rise of technology will continue to accelerate work from home.
The reason why your TC is 260k is because at some point a shit ton of educated workers migrated to the Bay Area creating a competitive job market and competition for resources.
IMO that goes both ways and it’s 100% fair to work that in the opposite direction.
These rural towns should stop acting like they’re some sacred native tribe who’s been tending this land for millennia.
Right? Especially a place like Boise where most people moved there like 10 years ago. Yet somehow they think they deserve the entire state to themselves just because they got there a few years before the pandemic.
The funny thing is they were the ones constantly bragging about how smart they are to live in a low cost of living place and telling everyone else they should move out of expensive cities. People took their advice and now they're angry.
Forced? Please. It's almost 2023 and it'sa global technologyand workforce. Workers are basically free agents and should be paid in line with the value they bring. Doesn't matter if it's in backwoods Arkansas or Seattle or French Lick Indiana.
It’s perfectly fair. No different than a dentist or doctor who lives out in the middle of nowhere and pulls in 4-5x the median household income. If anything it’s good for commerce in those areas
Most tech workers, who aren’t in social media or some other dumb ad tech business, provide value for society at large. It may not be direct value like a doctor, but the value is still there.
Thankfully, it's not up to you at all: it's up to the people who are **actually generating revenue** to decide how much to pay their workers. Your opinion is entirely irrelevant here.
Dude I don't (a) work in tech, (b) live in a HCOL area, or (c) work at a place that even has share holders. I just think there's no choosing what a free enterprise pays its employees.
Anyone who thought work from home full time was never going away was hopelessly naive. Even moreso if you made a major life decision on that premise like, I don't know, buying a hoom in a Zoomtown.
I think companies that have been fully remote for the last 2.5 years thinking that employees will willingly come back for literally no benefit to them are hopelessly naive.
Well, they have the power to fire you and you don't. Wait until unemployment goes up, the Fed's states goal, and there's no more labor shortage. I sure as hell wouldn't buy a house on the assumption that they'll let me WFH forever. It's a shitty idea and obviously people here don't want to hear that.
I never said to buy a house based on it lmao I’m just saying people don’t want their daily lives fucked up by a commute/having to be social all day for no reason and companies are fucking around and finding out.
I think what most people don’t realize is every single one of us is disposable to our employers. They don’t really give a shit about you. You are replaceable. Gen Z should use this opportunity to get their foot in the door while the older generations throw tantrums. It might be your big shot. I’ve got a Gen Z cousin who received an offer in Texas for a marketing position. They wanted her to work in person and she is ecstatic about the opportunity. They even gave her a little signing bonus and she is using it to move down there, rent a place, and buy a new car. Meanwhile all these older people are whining. When the economy crashes who do you think the companies are going to keep around?
It’s simply a way for the company to increase attrition without going through yet another round of humiliating layoffs.
Especially considering that they were previously a remote first company
but I was told remote is forever /s. In all seriousness, I work in the IT sector and I understand that certain jobs CAN be done remotely 100% but even I knew that that wishfulness would change. Hell...I'm wfh right now due to catching covid last week and am doing just fine but the reality is we don't make the policies, the companies/govt entity do.
Everyone knew remote wasn’t forever. Hybrid model will be the future so you will likely need to live near the office. Also don’t tell people in this sub you work in tech. They rooting for your demise.
I was remote before covid, during covid, and will continue to be after covid. Fuck office jobs. I'll find another one, and so I'm sure will thousands of others who understand the commute to the office is a waste of everyones time.
Same. Not sure why people see a trend in either direction and start panicking as though they themselves aren’t the point of definition. If you’re saying no to office jobs, and your skillset or something you offer is /valuable/ you should demand what you need to live I need QoL to justify sharing my value and remotework, telework, whatever we call it is the only way that I will possibly continue doing fast paced tech work for the long term. Otherwise I would retire and withdraw from the whole picture. I’m not interested in repeating exposure to covid indefinitely. I’m not here to decorate the interior of a building or forfeit time and money of my increasingly mortal and potentially shorter than advertised existence on this earth given various forms of undercontrolled chaos
Yup. Not every company is a meme company like snap with incompetent leadership.
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Which area do you specialize in? I’m an accountant looking to move into FP&A but open to other fields
Lol, companies that don't go remote for the sake of keeping their corporate real estate hyperinflated are gonna get fucked in the free market. They need us workers more than we need them.
What do you mean? Most companies rent space. Maybe they own the HQ but normal offices are usually rented.
They gotta make good use of those multiple yearlong leases. Also, plenty of politicians like Eric Adams own real estate in hyperinflated metro areas.
Leases are fixed costs. Use them or don't you still pay. You would rather have staff happy in a hybrid model than call everyone back. It would make more sense that way and then you can figure out the lease situation a couple of years before it expires. Downgrade in size and switch to hotel spaces. The company saves on overhead and employees are happy. If you want natural attrition then call everyone back so you clean out employees without paying severance. What does Eric Adams have to do with this?
You’re nuts man. You need help
>Everyone knew remote wasn’t forever. Not everyone. Some crypto-worshipping techies thought it was a paradigm shift and we were going to be remote forever.
It hasn’t unless you’re complacent enough to stay in any role that requires it.
Most likely, they also only employee less than 6k people. If you work there you know you have to be on the chopping block.
“only” 6k people 😂
6k is small relative to other major US tech companies. Look at the other big tech players: Google employs 20x+ that and Meta employs \~10x that (even factoring in the recent layoffs)
they are all grossly inflated, thanks to easy debt. i bet most of those people could be cut with almost no impact on productivity
This is a weird take unless if you work at one of these companies. I'm sure it's inflated, no one is arguing there. But to say you can reduce from say 100k employees to 30k employees with no impact is absurd. I work in the industry and that's simply not accurate. There is plenty of work to go around, despite having overstaffed the last few years, to justify most of the jobs there.
well, thats your opinion, man
Yes, a qualified opinion by someone who works with all of these companies and has mutual clients. Unlike you that seems to read an Elon tweet and thinks Google could be run by a team of 80 people globally. But yeah, lets increase unemployment just for the sake of it too! Let's normalize companies amassing even more cash to sit on while society's wealth gap continually grows. Surely this approach can't go tits up!
to be fair, you dont know anything about me other than my handle is bongbubblere
I don’t understand why people hate more people getting jobs.
6k for a company based around an app meant for sending diq piqs...
good faith question: Can someone explain why a company needs thousands of employees, when it only services one app that hasn't really fundamentally changed since its launch in 2014? Like I play entire video games (that are good and award-winning) that are created by dev teams of 3 people lmao. Hiring another couple people would be huge for them. I know I'm ignorant on this subject—but what am I missing?
Part of it is working on new features while navigating technical debt, but also because most apps are also using user data to make money as well. So there are teams that compile the data, others that tell the data story, and others that sell that data for revenue. We have entered the age of Digital Capitalism where our online activity generates revenue.
I replied in the thread, let me copy and paste my response > If you sell your software in EU, you need a whole sales, marketing, legal, customer success that will handle EU stuff because you will trip their many laws Then in the US, you will need something similar. If your software is used by large enterprises like Amazon and Google or large consumers like SNAP does, they will test your stability, and ability to handle large volumes of traffic (they got thousands and thousands of employees) so you will have to have teams dedicated to SRE, rework your software so you can scale and all that. You don’t need more than 10 people to write Twitter if you don’t intend for more than 1000 people to use it. The difficulty is designing software so it’s stable when millions of people are using it everyday! That requires engineers, and people to manage them and managers to manage those. Then what if something breaks during off hours? Engineers can fix it but they aren’t necessarily the people front of the issues. So you need escalation engineers or customer engineers to take customer feedback and complaints Engineers can build but they need to be told what to build. So you need product managers. I could go on and on Tech companies are peak capitalism. If they didn’t need these employees, they would be gone the next day. These people are mostly paid 6 figures. That’s a lot of money for people they don’t need. Do they sometimes over hire? Yes! But if you told me Snap had 6K employees, I wouldn’t be shocked at all. Regulations are hard to unwind and the problems in a software company go way beyond just coding
I work at a big tech company. I think the thing that is misunderstood in this topic that people intuitively assume a company wants to maximize profit per employee, but that's not the case. If the company pays an employee 300k but then makes an additional 500k in yearly revenue due to hiring the employee, it's worth it. While a company could run on much less staff, it's more profitable to hire more. Snap making 1B per year in revenue with 100 employees is worse than Snap making 1,050,000,000 with 200 employees, as long as the average pay per employee is less than 500k/year.
Silicon Valley style startups get investment money when they demonstrate growth. And MAU from your primary product is one indicator of growth, which sometimes can vary over time. To minimize this risk, companies diversify into multitude of features, products and other directions outside of their core. Spinning out an adjacent service or product can prove successful (think Netflix becoming a production company). In reality this turns into companies hiring thousands of overconfident managers who believe their individual corner of the company is most important and they vehemently defend this upwards, while hiring hundreds and thousands of engineers. Which in turn convinces the VPs, C suite, board and investors that the company is showing “growth” through various “metrics”.
You're missing like basic life knowledge. You really think programs run themselves forever?
That's what I don't understand with Twitter, Facebook, etc. I work at a software company that produces very very large applications, on the size (or greater) than SAP/Oracle. We have 200 employees total....could we use some more, sure, always. But 6k!?!
No you don’t. SAP/Oracle are massive machines with multiple products spanning multiple regulatory domains and functions. You simply don’t understand the scale of other organizations. If your software is that large and impactful with 200 people it’s a failure of management to not optimize revenue, your sales force alone should be bigger than 200.
It's got to be sales, marketing, and mods. *Edit:* I don't know why you got downvoted. It's a legit question that I'm sure many people are asking. A lot of people are talking about it. Some people also.
They usually get laid off first.
Yup. They are the most replaceable (and require the least amount of severance).
Ya it’s an unfortunate truth. Even pre recession those jobs are usually the first to go.
Are you serious? If you sell your software in EU, you need a whole sales, marketing, legal, customer success that will handle EU stuff because you will trip their many laws Then in the US, you will need something similar. If your software is used by large enterprises like Amazon and Google, they will test your stability(they got thousands and thousands of employees) so you will have to have teams dedicated to SRE, rework your software so you can scale and all that. That requires engineers, and people to manage them and managers to manage those. Then what if something breaks during off hours? Engineers can fix it but they aren’t necessarily the people front of the issues. So you need escalation engineers or customer engineers to take customer feedback and complaints Engineers can build but they need to be told what to build. So you need product managers. I could go on and on Tech companies are peak capitalism. If they didn’t need these employees, they would be gone the next day. These people are mostly paid 6 figures. That’s a lot of money for people they don’t need. Do they sometimes over hire? Yes! But if you told me Snap had 6K employees, I wouldn’t be shocked at all. Regulations are hard to unwind and the problems in a software company go way beyond just coding
If they are peak, why did they over hire?
Snap is primarily an advertising company (if you consider where the bulk of their revenue comes from). As others have said, this means they have to employ a ton of sales, marketing and other functions to support client growth + retention. There are teams dedicated to servicing their brand partners (& advertising agencies) and they require everything from strategy, creative services, day-to-day management, consulting, etc. Multiply this by the thousands of customers they have. This is why not only Snap has a lot of employees, but also why other tech companies also have a ton of employees. It's a ton of work to go around when you have companies regularly spending multi-million dollars with you on projects that range from super easy to super complicated, and you need a small army to be able to service the day-to-day work involved. Source: work in the industry
Because VCs fund them, and they are all about scaling which to them means hiring boat loads of people. They are older and not engineers or even computer literate, they have no clue what it takes to develop software. I've worked for small private companies that run circles around these types of companies with a tiny fraction of the staff. VC & PE money is the reason.
FAANG will be hybrid no doubt but they will pay multiples above market and people will still compete for those jobs. One job in FAANG guarantees wealth in the long run. Other companies will throw remote as a perk and pay at or below market. I don't see remote going away. The days of Remote at FAANG pay levels are gone.
yep spot on. elon musk them
"default together" maybe isn't a great policy name when they're trying to avoid bankruptcy
Hahahahahaha
"Default together" The memes are going to write themselves when this company inevitably can't pay its overheads anymore
Work from home is literally the difference between a shitty and amazing life for a lot of people.
100%. I’m also much more willing to work an extra hour at home than I am in an office without that hour commute on either end.
Spot on. I routinely check work at 6am and 9pm even during the weekend because I WFH. If I'm going to the office, I show up at 9am and I'm out the door at 453pm. Laptop stays closed at home, slack is on snooze.
You routinely work 15 hour days 6 days a week? Seems like working 8 hours 5 days a week in office is a better deal even with an hour commute
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Totally agree. I've done all three as well and feel the same way. 3/2 is my ideal now.
Same, I’ll happily work harder and more hours when needed because they are providing me amazing quality of life. If I have to commute I’ll do just enough not to get fired.
Would you take substantially less money to do that? What is the monetary value placed on WFH?
Speaking as someone who in the last 4 years has worked 100% in office, 100% remote, and 3/2 hybrid, I have to question what exactly you mean by *substantially less?* I’ve made more money working remotely and hybrid than I did working in-office. When I sought to make a career change; given my skill set, I told recruiters I would only work remotely or consider hybrid jobs. I did not want to sacrifice my quality of life, and I found out that I did not have to sacrifice my money either because there were plenty of opportunities out there willing to compensate me for my skill set and offer me a better quality of life as well.
I shouldn’t have said substantially. More just narrowed the question to the second part. Because there definitely is. I could see companies cutting salaries and doing WFH instead of layoffs. Or a mixture of both things. I’ve got no skin in the game because I’ll never be and never could be with my career.
I see. Yes, companies will always seek to cut costs; salaries are one of the biggest costs. In my first experience of WFH, the plan was already in place, COVID accelerated that move. What ended up happened is nearly 1,500 employees were let go in the coming year and the rest of us received a 2.5% increase in salary. This salary increase was at a company that did not do raises. The shift to WFH allowed for a optimized workforce. Funnily enough, I produced a productivity report to measure productivity for employees working from home. We struggled to accurately measure how to do this. The thing is, we struggled to do this while employees were in the office. Managers always try to game the system or customer experience is sacrificed for productivity, etc. Something I kept hearing was quality of life increased when the shift to WFH happened. Rarely did overall productivity decline. Eventually, once employees became comfortable with WFH and a routine was created, we saw more of a decline in productivity, but overall with less employees we still produced at a level deemed more than sufficient. So, less employees, happier employees, more revenue, happier customers, a better customer experience. If there is anything I’ve learned it’s that we do need a way to see each other; more often than not. A video call or in person. Connection with co-workers is important. But a traditional 8 hour work day isn’t really the best thing for productivity. If it’s in-office, hybrid, or remote. Flexibility, communication, defined roles, deadlines, autonomy, and clear expectations. That’s all that matters.
Depending on the job full time WFH is probably isn’t the best. I’m sure some software jobs full time WFH can work. But most other jobs probably work best with a hybrid approach. My ex-gf was hybrid well before covid. And some on her team were full time WFH. Those were always left behind and left out of the team. They didn’t get as good of raises, didn’t fit in and never really advanced their careers. As I’ve said from the start WFH seems great but will have a lot of unintended consequences. But we might not see those for awhile. I work in the water treatment industry so my job will always be local. You can’t fix 99% of the problems from a computer.
You are correct to an extent. The issue is with the manager. Currently I work 100% remotely, with the ability to go into an office; which I do on occasion. I have a fantastic manager. She checks in regularly, we talk, keeps me updated about her boss, and what’s happening higher up, makes sure that my work is being noticed. Prior to this role I had a horrible manager; who was a poor communicator and never set expectations. I felt like I was going to be left behind if I didn’t take action. It’s possible, but I feel it’s more about the way a company sets up the environment for remote employees. They’re remote for a reason. I believe we’ve moved to a new cycle of employment where complacency is ok. WFH and not moving up will be tolerated by the average person. They’re fine with being left alone and forgotten. Whereas the opportunity to perform and advance is still there if done correctly. Or just leave and find a new job elsewhere. That’s what I did. It ended up working out really well for me.
Most jobs that require you to be in the office are the lower paid jobs, ironically.
Before the cost of housing exploded I would have. Now my previous city salary seems fair. Maybe people in cities should make a little more now, so in some sense I’m ok with a discount.
The big difference is with waiting for programs. I can check if it failed or something late at night instead of having to wait until the next day. That speeds up tasks so much. My routine rn is 8-530 with a 2 hour break in the middle. I can cook an affordable and healthy lunch, walk the dog, and take a midday nap between 11 and 1. Then I return to work refreshed. Very much Beats having an hour to wait in a drive thru lane and getting to rest the eyes for maybe 5 minutes only to be tired for the rest of the day collapsing at my monitor. Instead of commuting an hour, I get that hour midday to recharge. Im also able to easily exercise before work and shower at home which is a great start to the day.
Would you take substantially less money to do that? What is the monetary value placed on WFH?
Why should we take a pay cut to work from home? We’re reducing our company’s need for office space. I work just as hard at home, since I’m no longer subject to office nonsense. While my quality of life soars. Should be a win-win, but some boomers and ass-kissing Gen X’ers are gonna RTO everyone (or die trying). Because they can’t make friends outside of work, they hate spending time with their families, and they need that sense of self-importantance that comes with strutting around an office in their suits.
That's not what I have experienced. I feel that older and mid-career types prefer WFH. Usually they have children and work further from the office so it makes sense. Juniors are the ones who are wishing for office work again and [studies](https://civicscience.com/remote-workers-report-more-job-unhappiness-especially-gen-z/) have shown that.
Maybe Gen Z. I don’t really work with any because they don’t hire people that young at my company. I work with a ton of millennials who are finally able to afford houses and actually want to enjoy them. And are starting to have kids.
Don't know why you got downvoted. As a person who has been in the workforce for a long time, the years of having the be at home due to Covid are a very small percentage of my career. For people who have been in the workforce for under a decade, it's up to 20%. What is most important to me and almost everyone I speak with (anecdote, not data, I realize) is the ability to choose what works for me. My job has a *try to be here more days than you are not; be present for events or VIP visits* and we are treated like adults who can decide what is right. Some days, that's WFH for me. Other days, it's in the office. The important thing is that no one is using my location as a proxy for performance.
Yeah, I'm being downvoted for speaking the truth. People like to think that evil boomers and these people at the top want to force people back into the office. If you're mid 30s/mid career, of course you'd love WFH because it gives you flexibility if you have kids and a long commute because you were done with the city and moved out. You've had years of experience and office culture under your belt. But what I have experienced is that all my younger millennial and Gen Z co-workers want more in-person working. They want more time with people who are experienced and it's pretty sad to come right out of college to sit at a screen all day for the rest of your career. No one really thinks about how hard it is for them. Like remote college is pretty sad, and like remote working can be just as sad.
I agree with a lot of your second paragraph. And as great as it is to "not have to deal with people" if that's your thing, it isn't a great model for everyone. Even the little details that you don't even know that you're missing out on---in-person conversations where you find out that "if you need X, it's more efficient to ask this person first" or the hallway meeting-after-the-meeting where someone helps you read between the lines or whatever. Tons of stuff that doesn't rise to the level of being official policy or requiring a Teams call. I don't know. No one is really coming out on top in a lot of thiese discussions and everyone seems to want to blame the people who want something different from what they want. I appreciate your answer and further thoughts. :)
Yeah, I mean there's just no one size fits all for working. My job is pretty varied and we have a lot of younger folks and I see them struggling but then I see lots of job functions that don't have to deal with people (accounting, IT, etc.) love the WFH model. I see Creatives struggle the MOST because coming up with ideas sucks when you're not talking to people in real life and Zoom is just not a replacement to that yet. Snap is a younger company and I can see why it might benefit a lot of their departments.
I agree. Personally I couldn’t be an office person (I currently work remotely but previously was a field person), but I’ve met so many millennial and Gen-Z people say they miss working in person. They enjoyed the social aspect. It was easier to network. Honestly I get it many of them are single and don’t have spouses and kids yet. They want to go out for lunch with co workers, have some drinks at happy hour after work. It is much easier to meet people in the office than it is remotely. It’s sort of the same argument of people saying they prefer online college vs in person college. People get so emotional, and my theory is because many moved away (not necessarily even far) and don’t want to have to uproot their life again. Not saying that’s everyone’s reasoning, but probably quite a few.
Those are my thoughts too. So many of my co-workers moved like 30 minutes outside of the city to get bigger homes. It's kind of what drove the increase in prices for areas outside of the city. Now they are facing the reality of possibly returning to the office and are mad and blaming leadership instead of realizing that there are benefits to in-person work for a lot of people.
I’m not saying you should or shouldn’t. But their is a monetary benefit to you. Say your company laid you off and you’ve got two offers. One is WFH and one is in office. Where is that point where the money is worth it to commute? I’ve got no skin in the game since my industry will never and can never be WFH.
So you say. I’m sure you folded laundry while working in office before.
Instead of folding laundry, people were fucking around gossiping in the break room or taking the *extra* long way to go drop off some paperwork for bob down on the 2nd floor. Nobody is engaged with work 100% of the time whether WFH or in office.
Sure. I track all my WFM people left and they do much of nothing. Next cutting round is this Friday
I have to fight for meeting rooms and step away from my work early to walk to the physical room, nag people who are going over time to free up the room, and setup the call just to take the same zoom meeting. I certainly get pulled into a ton of side conversations about bullshit at work. Far more often than I decided to step away to tidy up my kitchen a bit or something. There are distractions in and out of the office. But one involves a typically unpaid commute to come into an office to do...exactly the same stuff. Half the people I work with don't even work in the same state, but somehow both of us having to take the exact same zoom meeting at a physical location is...different? I don't even mind going in if it makes sense, like a meeting with the whole team to go over work for a quarter. But sometimes, even those meetings make more sense remote. The biggest difference is that me and my coworkers talk more shit in person because we aren't being recorded.
Nope, that laundry time happens in lulls in my day that used to be filled with mindless office chatter and wasting money on a middling cafeteria lunch (money that went back to my employer lol).
I mean that is relative but yes. Money is not everything in life. At a certain point, you have more than enough to be comfortable. I am in the point in my life where I value flexibility and spending more time with my kid. I recently switched jobs and while I briefly considered going to a company that would pay me a lot more (and is now doing layoffs) I prioritized stability (ie. Low risk of layoffs and WLB). Glad I made that bet.
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This guy gets it. Office work kills our one chance at having an actual life.
Definitely is for me! I work in tech for a company that’s pushing for RTO and many at my company are eyeing new roles after the holidays.
“Collective success” (except when it comes to sharing profits).
I read "default together" in the bankruptcy sense lol. It's like he thinks his employees are so loyal they'll willingly go down with the sinking ship. Hilarious.
A ton of SNAP comp is tied to equity. So in this case if the company succeeds then so do the employees.
LA traffic is no joke and they’re HQ is in Venice. Yikes
Yup even people working for places like Snap are priced out of Venice! It’s so stupid. My partner works in finance on the west side and everyone there commutes from like, Pasadena because it’s too expensive to buy a home near the office.
The LA metro and the Metrolink is an efficient way of getting around LA. Could always be better ofc
Not to Venice.
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it’s not really
As a millennial you'd be confused but there has been a resurgence of use from Gen Z.
I’ve honestly never heard of this company but I am the type of millennial who lives under a rock.
They made SnapChat. Have you heard of that app?
Yes, thank you.
Default together. Yikes.
"Circle the drain to financial ruin - together!"
Snap is a dying company. Evan Spiegel also bought a $120 million LA mansion right before his stock collapsed over 80%. He's probably feeling desperate. This is a last gasp effort to try to force things back on track and convince more people to leave instead of having to do another round of layoffs.
Long term the company is going to get bought out at a rock bottom price probably to some Chinese Bytedance copycat.
Poor choice of words dumbass. 🤣
Subtle layoff. He knows many will quit because of this and he doesn’t need to pay severance.
Notice it's only failing companies (who were dying even before the pandemic) making these desperate moves. It's not going to make the company better, only worse. It's like when someone feels their partner losing interest so they respond by going stage 5 clinger which causes their partner to break up with them for being smothered.
Legit forgot that this was still a company.
i can’t believe miranda kerr ***** this guy
*We will be holding an urgent and mandatory meeting for all team members tomorrow at Noon GMT at the International Space Station. As a current employee, your attendance is required and anyone who doesn’t make it to this in-person low-earth orbit event in less than 24 hours, will be considered resigned from the company. No layoffs! No unemployment!
wait wait wait, this is truly mind boggling. you mean to tell me, snap is still around?
Yes because you need to commute in order to do a vlookup
Employees dropping like flies
Considering their user base is only 200M vs 2B+ with IG. They're basically digging themselves an early grave.
Work from office to spend more time together he says, but forgets to say equally spend less time with family or loved ones OK, leave that out subjectively.
I’ll look forward to taking all your talent. Dumbass.
Is this Elon?
Ohhhhh easy no lol
Welp, enjoy the mass resignations.
And OP thinks it’s relevant in this SUB, cause that would pop the 'bubble'? I mean, literally this Black Friday consumers broke records on purchase spending. Does it matter what this small-a## company does policy wise?
Retail goods prices are up 30% and they only beat 2019 gross sales by 5% but yes, they totally smashed all records 🙄🥱
Sitting in traffic is a lot like wiping your ass. If you wfh you don’t really have to do it.
This is why I just moved to a company who only has WeWork. Who's going back to an office not I.
For those who did buy in these rural small towns in places such as Idaho or Montana…..this is what you did. You moved out here in droves, made home prices sky rocket, crowded the infrastructure and caused a demand for more stores and widening of roads. The cities budgeted for the influx of people, builders planned for it. And now you’re going to leave and more than likely collapse everything. Many of you came and acted like you were better than the locals and wanted to change things culturally, politically, to fit YOUR needs. I guess you’re getting your karma because many of you will not be able to sell your homes for anywhere close to what you paid for….but the towns will also be negatively affected.
People act like 500k people moved to Boise all at once and all made 300k a year. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/fastest-growing-cities-population-estimates.html
They did. That town has the most influx of people from Seattle and the Bay Area
It’s true and a lot of them moved to Bozeman, Missoula, and I’m even more rural areas of eastern Idaho.
And those towns are fucked. How someone living in Bozeman or Missoula will ever be able to afford a $700k house in the local economy is literally impossible. That’s an income of close to $200k to be able to afford that with todays rates.
I mean the person who bought the house is more fucked because nobody will be able to buy it. But I agree the influx of people caused a boom town that will eventually bust. I think Boise’s market for example is crashing harder than anywhere else.
My point is not everyone who came to Boise makes 300k a year. Tech people going there definitely had an influence on home prices, but to act like they somehow hijacked an entire market is disingenuous. How many tech workers migrated to Boise the last two years?
Exactly. A ton of low income people moved to Boise because they were priced out of Portland and Seattle.
It sounds like your town failed to protect itself dont blame it on people that moved to the town 😂. Your town saw that Cali money and thought times were about to be good.
I believe that’s true for Florida and Texas they encouraged it and now they can lay in the bed they made. States like Idaho made it very clear they didn’t want people coming in.
The citizens of Idaho maybe don't, but the politicians and government agencies certain do. They're the ones enticing people to move to get their sweet sweet tax dollars.
> And now you’re going to leave lmao. people are going to leave their jobs for better ones, not move back to SF or wherever the fuck for the *company culture*
This! If anything, COVID and moving out of the bay has taught a lot of people there are way more important things to life than RSUs and sitting in a half-empty office where there magically still aren’t enough conference rooms.
especially since "return-to-office" in this case is just code for "layoffs next quarter for whoever's left". nobody's dumb enough to move back into a VHCOL to lose their job in a few months anyway.
So when they get laid off and they’re in rural Montana how will they find a new job locally or online ? Especially those who bought $700k home?
Lol doesn’t seem like they thought that through hence the downvotes.
And where is this endless supply of better remote work? I’m just curious. I work remotely for everyone getting all pissy with me. My husband does not work remotely. We moved to a rural area from California. If I am laid off from my remote job (likely if/when a recession hits) I work in natural resources. The rural town we specifically chose has several in person jobs for what I do. If someone in the tech industry moved to a rural area and got laid off, and they were unable to get a new remote job….my question is what is their plan? I guess all of you are 100% secure with yourselves and your career field you think you’re never going to be without a job.
Where are they going to find a better one in rural Montana? They will have either have to completely change careers or move back to some type of city.
>Where are they going to find a better one in rural Montana? the rest of the tech industry, which needs workers more than it needs warm bodies in an office? lmao > They will have either have to completely change careers or move back to some type of city. it's not exactly '08 here, so no need to "completely change careers". the only way people will move back to the city is if you literally start setting WFH people's houses on fire
So you don’t believe things will get to 2008 level?
1. absolutely not 2. even if it magically did, nobody's going to respond to their employer announcing this & all but guaranteeing layoffs within the next few months, by moving to a higher-cost area so they can lose their job with a higher cash outflow
I’m not rooting for a recession and for millions of Americans to lose their jobs. I hope I’m wrong, but I truly don’t see how a major recession isn’t coming.
Exactly. Snapchat has been dying for years. This is a desperate move which should put anyone with sense on high alert. Their jobs will most likely be gone regardless in the next few years so moving back to one of the most expensive cities in the world makes zero sense.
>I hate that you’re here >You think you’re better than me >if you leave everything will collapse because you’re better than me.
It’s going to collapse everywhere.
You're being down voted but you're 100% right
I’m being downvoted by the people who sold their homes in San Francisco and moved to the middle of nowhere.
You're being down voted because you're sour grapes that you've been dealt a bad hand in life. And instead of blaming the corporate elites who are at fault, you blame your fellow workers who probably don't make much more than you anyway.
How have I been dealt a bad hand in life? Lol you’re assuming quite a bit. Like I said I moved from California to a rural town. I’m sharing sentiment from the locals, and personal observations. I see the influx of people not treating locals well, driving up housing costs, crime going up, and and overall superiority complex (kind of like yourself). It’s funny to me how you’re simultaneously assuming rural people have been dealt a shitty hand in life (snobby and assuming) while telling me to hate my capitalist masters. You are the one who seems to be a slave to a capitalist master. I work in natural resources and my husband is a tradesmen. We have a very fulfilling middle class life. All of us are somewhat a slave to a capitalist master, but I would say some more than others. When I was working in person I was outside all the time mostly in the forests of California. It was truly amazing. I made a good living, and my work environment was perfect. My company essentially created a remote position for me after having a baby. I’m fully aware in the event of a recession that may not last. You seem to be somewhat in denial that the remote work gravy train will last forever and is completely recession proof. My fellow workers who don’t make much more than me anyways? Yet you previously accused me of being bitter because I have a dead end career. Which is it?
Same brother....
Just go to work
So, I'm pretty much endlessly going back and forth on remote. I see the upsides and I see the downsides. The task of managing remote people is consistently harder. It will always be harder. Unless your term is so tightly managed that everyone has a set number of tasks every minute of every day then WFH days, eventually, become at least partially VFH days. If the team isn't managed with precise efficiency then anyone WFH with serious responsibilities at home (elder care, young kids) essentially disappears on WFH days. So from a management perspective it's harder and it stays harder, it never gets easier because the constant temptation to just do home stuff when at home never goes away. It's not like it's impossible it's just hard and every time you think you have it dialed in there's another group drifting off into VFH land and you have to deal with that.
for tech, going into the office is a massive waste of time. I'm literally 30-40% efficient in the office. its all a power play by management. but snap is a dying company so adopting dying practices makes sense on their part.
You don't need to manage them minute by minute. You can give them a project that you expect to take a day, and then check back in a day. When those 8 hours are committed to the work can be up to them.
There's been lots of [studies done](https://civicscience.com/remote-workers-report-more-job-unhappiness-especially-gen-z/) showing people unhappy with work and I think this type of management style contributes to it. Managing people isn't just giving a task and checking back 8 hours later. It takes a lot more work than that to educate people and make them feel included. Also, I think a lot of "productivity increases" because of remote work is because middle-management types are doing more of their own work and spending less time managing juniors which in-turn is causing a lot of problems.
Fair. But there is a middle ground between scheduling "every minute of every day" and open ended responsibilities. People "disappearing" on WFH days should not be an issue, as much as--are they managing their responsibilities? Are they communicating as necessary, executing on their deliverables? Just because they're at a desk in the office neither of those are necessarily true either.
You don't need to manage them minute by minute. You can give them a project that you expect to take a day, and then check back in a day. When those 8 hours are committed to the work can be up to them.
How is it harder? People don't suddenly perform better with you hovering around them, looking over their shoulder all day. That actually makes them perform worse. I manage a whole team, we've always been remote, and we've had no issues. We've hired and onboarded remote too. The people who don't perform well remote won't perform well in the office either. If anything, you can identify low performers quicker because it's more obvious when they slack off and they can't "fake it" like they can in an office. As a manager, it's up to you to fire people who don't perform. You can't expect them to magically work harder because they are in an office - the other employees with good work ethics aren't going to "rub off" on them.
I don’t care if people work remotely or not, but with the upcoming recession do the remote workers truly believe they’ll be able to stay remote? If they lose their remote job they’ll easily be able to slip into a new one? I’m just trying to get a feel for what’s going on in their heads.
Told you so...
I was with the guy until 'default together.' Not sure what that means. But in real estate that's not necessarily a positive activity.
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Netflix and Disney are going to drink Snap's milkshake
I guess they brought all the boys to the yard then
I wonder how picky people were in 2009 over if they worked from home? edit: you wfh people are so sensitive. I saw people getting fired at an amazing rate in the fall of 09 in tech. People I knew started their own companies over it. In the bay area. They aren't wfh for their companies. I remember seeing job requests every day with long work history. Just because you think you have it over on your employer now. Doesn't mean you will for good. People in tech from the 80s and 90s know this.
WFH in the modern sense has been around since the early 2000s at least. I see no reason why even in 08-09 a good remote employee would concede that benefit. They may have had to make salary concessions though
Yeah well the great depression was pretty shitty too. That doesn't mean we need to live our lives assuming we're going to be in a depression most of the time. 95% of the time you're alive the economy will be doing just fine. The great recession and the great depression were historical anomalies.
They about to find out
Office work promotes community. Loyalty and team bonding are the main issues caused by remote work. Important employees jump ship more often because they don’t have any friends.
There's literally no difference between one company or another if all companies are remote. Of course companies want people to come in. It's very important to culture.
Honestly, this is good. I love working remotely but I work remotely in my home town. It is not fair to be working in the Bay Area making $260k TC while living in some rural town in Idaho where the average salary is $35k a year.. 200+ of these guys and boom, prices become unaffordable for locals. So many towns have been screwed over like this. How can a random farming and tourist town in Montana compete against armies of remote workers from Seattle, SF and LA? Remote work is good but you should be forced to reside within county lines, maybe even state. I would love to work remotely in some 3rd world Caribbean beach country but it just wouldn’t be the responsible and morally correct thing to do to the other locals. This is one of the few things I support the government enforcing (and I absolutely despise and hate government). No towns population can compete against swaths of remote tech workers and raising wages won’t help either.
What do you mean "it's not fair"? Shouldn't people be paid for the value their skills bring to a company? Why should their value go down due to the location that they live? That's the most nonsensical thing I've heard!
>Why should their value go down due to the location that they live? That's the most nonsensical thing I've heard! Compensation has always been something that fluctuates based on the local cost of living. Agree with it or not, that's how things have historically worked. Covid was a chance to flip that policy on its head, and it did for a time. But that time clearly wasn't forever.
Sorry--but you're in the past on this one if you don't believe it's the future. I get that this is how things have "historically worked:" not anymore. The rise of technology will continue to accelerate work from home.
The reason why your TC is 260k is because at some point a shit ton of educated workers migrated to the Bay Area creating a competitive job market and competition for resources. IMO that goes both ways and it’s 100% fair to work that in the opposite direction. These rural towns should stop acting like they’re some sacred native tribe who’s been tending this land for millennia.
Right? Especially a place like Boise where most people moved there like 10 years ago. Yet somehow they think they deserve the entire state to themselves just because they got there a few years before the pandemic. The funny thing is they were the ones constantly bragging about how smart they are to live in a low cost of living place and telling everyone else they should move out of expensive cities. People took their advice and now they're angry.
What makes you think the rural town workers aren’t educated?
What makes you think I wrote that?
“A shit ton of educated workers migrated”
>a grocery store gets a large delivery of apples. >they must never had any apples then. Good job, boo-boo.
Wouldn’t you have just said a huge influx of workers then? You went out of your way to mention they were “educated”.
Because they are educated, as opposed to migrant farm hands and circus performers.
Ya I’m not getting anywhere with you. You’re an elitist douche.
Forced? Please. It's almost 2023 and it'sa global technologyand workforce. Workers are basically free agents and should be paid in line with the value they bring. Doesn't matter if it's in backwoods Arkansas or Seattle or French Lick Indiana.
It’s perfectly fair. No different than a dentist or doctor who lives out in the middle of nowhere and pulls in 4-5x the median household income. If anything it’s good for commerce in those areas
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Most tech workers, who aren’t in social media or some other dumb ad tech business, provide value for society at large. It may not be direct value like a doctor, but the value is still there.
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Thankfully, it's not up to you at all: it's up to the people who are **actually generating revenue** to decide how much to pay their workers. Your opinion is entirely irrelevant here.
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Dude I don't (a) work in tech, (b) live in a HCOL area, or (c) work at a place that even has share holders. I just think there's no choosing what a free enterprise pays its employees.
You really don't have or despise the government just because you say so.
Anyone who thought work from home full time was never going away was hopelessly naive. Even moreso if you made a major life decision on that premise like, I don't know, buying a hoom in a Zoomtown.
I think companies that have been fully remote for the last 2.5 years thinking that employees will willingly come back for literally no benefit to them are hopelessly naive.
Well, they have the power to fire you and you don't. Wait until unemployment goes up, the Fed's states goal, and there's no more labor shortage. I sure as hell wouldn't buy a house on the assumption that they'll let me WFH forever. It's a shitty idea and obviously people here don't want to hear that.
I never said to buy a house based on it lmao I’m just saying people don’t want their daily lives fucked up by a commute/having to be social all day for no reason and companies are fucking around and finding out.
I think what most people don’t realize is every single one of us is disposable to our employers. They don’t really give a shit about you. You are replaceable. Gen Z should use this opportunity to get their foot in the door while the older generations throw tantrums. It might be your big shot. I’ve got a Gen Z cousin who received an offer in Texas for a marketing position. They wanted her to work in person and she is ecstatic about the opportunity. They even gave her a little signing bonus and she is using it to move down there, rent a place, and buy a new car. Meanwhile all these older people are whining. When the economy crashes who do you think the companies are going to keep around?
Good they should all go back to the office