You left out getting paid (well) every two weeks and receiving options that are increasing in value as the company becomes more efficient. It’s not personal, it’s not stupidity it’s just business and there are hundreds of thousands of developers who are willing and capable of replacing any of us.
The alternative is to start your own business. If you did and generated more revenue while your employees were in the office based on previous data, I think you’d end your remote work policy for all but the people who are irreplaceable to your revenue stream.
Meta can be shitty to its employees... but tech in general (including Meta) can also still be better than other jobs.
On the other hand, the value of stability (aka "every two weeks") appears to be decreasing as it becomes apparent a lot of tech management has no strategic clothes, and the end result of that is going to be 1/3 of the company being laid off.
Or as the quip goes, 'Anyone can make money in a bull market.'
It’s not personal, it’s not stupidity it’s just business and there are hundreds of thousands of developers who are willing and capable of replacing any of us.
I agree that it's just business, and that ultimately what employees at most large companies are paid for -- is to smile, and eat boneheaded apparently blatantly hypocritical directives from upper management (in the latter sense, referring specifically to the attempt to drag mid-level employees back to the office, while top lieutenants are apparently exempt).
But I don't see why we're not allowed to call it "stupid" (or to apply even stronger words) when that's plainly what it is.
The alternative is to start your own business.
Or join a company with more manageable levels of cognitive dissonance.
> If you did and generated more revenue while your employees were in the office based on previous data, I think you’d end your remote work policy for all but the people who are irreplaceable to your revenue stream.
This is confusing "happened in overlapping time periods" with "happened because of". What if you generated less revenue during a period where TikTok was eating your lunch, Apple changed privacy controls which impacted the targeted ad landscape, your CEO was focused on VR, and also lots of people were WFH? From the stories I've heard from Meta, the issue was way more that there were a lot of strategically questionable projects than that staff were less efficient at pursuing them because of WFH.
> What if you generated less revenue during a period where TikTok was eating your lunch, Apple changed privacy controls which impacted the targeted ad landscape, your CEO was focused on VR,
The underlying commonality here is out of touch, uncreative, and inept executives. Why is TikTok eating Facebook's lunch? Because they spent their considerable engineering talent trying to squeeze ever more money out of their users via advertising than making compelling products.
Apple impacting their revenue by allowing the users, of all people, to be aware of and control data sent to third parties (Facebook). They doubled down on surveillance capitalism and when Apple simply made their collection opt-in they lost a ton of revenue. Apple didn't even block Facebook, they just made it clearer to users exactly what Facebook was collecting.
And then the CEO is off making stupid bets on VR. The Metaverse is conceptually bankrupt. Instead of letting users create environments and content from the bottom up and fully control how their virtual world and self work they created a curated top down shitty theme park.
Facebook spent years squandering their engineering talent on bullshit. Working from home has zero to do with their management failures. In fact, for a company like Facebook whose every product is tied to communication, a requirement for engineers to be in an office should be seen as the massive fucking failure of mission that it is.
If their platform was worth a fraction of what it's valued at (by Wall Street) Facebook should hardly need offices. They should be able to dog food all of their own products to communicate and collaborate with ease. Demanding everyone return to offices is a signal that either their executives either don't believe their own bullshit and/or realize their platform is actually garbage for communication and collaboration.
That is too defeatist. There isn't an unending pool of potential employees that FB wants to hire. The company is getting less efficient because they are not negotiating effectively. Remote work is a powerful bit of leverage for recruiting and retention, and FB has flushed it.
> The alternative is to start your own business. If you did and generated more revenue while your employees were in the office based on previous data, I think you’d end your remote work policy for all but the people who are irreplaceable to your revenue stream.
I think it’s simpler than this and if my goal is maximum productivity to recognize that different work modes get me there. I think some work and people combo (eg, software dev and data work) is well-suited for remote work. So I’ll actually outperform in office companies in my field by strutting my work culture to maximize this.
I’d certainly start my own org if needed. Or more likely just choose to work with others who have done the same.
> [..] there are hundreds of thousands of developers who are willing and capable of replacing any of us.
Where are all these developers and why are they available? Everyone I know is either already working for someone they like or wouldn't consider Meta anyways. My guess is that Meta will have a tough time hiring if/when they get past their current problems.
Or, you know, for employees to push back on a policy that's bad for a majority of employees rather than "look at me, I'm a rugged individual who can start my own business."
It may not be personal but these forcing people to commute to work on a virtual reality platform where they don't actually believe in remote work / virtual reality is stupid.
Seems to me if I was leading a "Metaverse" type project I'd be wanting my developers in that environment and making it good enough for "in person" collaboration so it will succeed for everyone.
(I am not a big believer in Meta or its vision for this but if someone could develop a viable platform that made remote collaboration feel more like in-person collaboration it'd be very exciting.)
The alternative is to start your own business. If you did and generated more revenue while your employees were in the office based on previous data, I think you’d end your remote work policy for all but the people who are irreplaceable to your revenue stream.