Meta updates RTO policy with stricter mandate, saying workers may lose their jobs if they don’t show up 3 days a week::Meta, formerly known as Facebook, told employees that its new RTO policy would be enforced by management.
A year ago they told people something different and people made decisions around that policy. Reversing course is evil and bad management.
Sounds like the kind of shit you pull when you actively want attrition. There are times when a company needs to cut people and then layoffs happen. There are also times when the company is willing to say “we’re imposing policy X and if you can’t get with that, we’re happy to lose you.”
Which is bad management because it stops you being in control of who leaves and who stays.
In fact, you’re more likely to lose the people you actually want to keep when playing that game because they are the ones with the more employable skills, hence why they can leave in the first place.
The people who stay are those that are stuck, and can’t get jobs somewhere else.
Edit : speeling and gramarr.
Yeah I think it’s a bad option for bad times. I’ve never been in the CEO chair through something like this so I wonder if there’s more to it somehow.
Lets see how that will work out…
Maybe this is his plan all along? It will help cut down the workforce without having to do a layoff and pay severance.
It also filters out those who don’t put up with exploitation
My company has a 3-day/week hybrid policy. It’s lame. Since not everyone is there on the same day, I still sit in my cube on teams chat all day. Most of the time I don’t interact with anyone for work related reasons. And as an introvert, I don’t really go out of my way to engage with people otherwise.
Hybrid is really the worst of both worlds, none of the benefits of having everyone in office, none of the benefits of never having to go into the office
It can be improved if you use ‘anchor days’ with your team in the office, otherwise it’s a complete waste of time.
My office is an absolute wasteland for this reason. Also because everyone who works there has teammates who are full remote, or in the central US office, the eastern US office, the Japan office, India, etc. There’s no such thing as being physically present with your coworkers ANYWAY, even if you come into the office.
Ironically, I find the office more pleasant now on rare occasions when I go in. It’s SO QUIET and clean. There are no dirty dishes in the sink. The bathrooms are always free and clean. I work in a cluttered home with small children most days and the office is like a luxury resort by comparison.
I show up to my work chatrooms and video calls 5 times a day. My bosses treat me like a professional adult. I get my shit done, fight fires, and communicate to my team and co-workers just fine. My morning routine involves not driving to work, because it’s a goddamn waste of my time.
If you can’t handle remote work, your employees will find places that can. Adapt or die!
Given how bad this company is tanking, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was deliberately done to cut payroll.
Absolutely, this return to office stuff has been an absolute gift for CEOs wanting to downsize, it’s the perfect fluffy PR way to turn the thumbscrews. Factor in the popular idea that you’re a slacker if you don’t work hard all the time and you basically have public support too.
I’m sure plenty of people will just suck it up and view the past few years as a very extended break from office nonsense and commuting hassle, but enough will jump ship to fill quotas
Office space costs a lot of money. Desktop computers cost a lot of money. The inability of their co-workers to immediately wake up and solve some emergency costs a lot of money.
Every day they are not continuing remote work practices is another day they are bleeding money.
The company I work for is still fully committed to remote first. They have closed multiple office locations including the entire headquarters campus. They can’t stop gushing about how much money they’re saving.
Thing is though that often, real estate deals are made over long periods of time. I think a lot of RTO stuff is happening because companies can’t just get out of their leases. They spent years and millions of dollars actually building offices and by god they want to see them get used.
Yeah, there’s definitely a big sunk cost thing going on too
They spent years and millions of dollars actually building offices and by god they want to see them get used.
Whether people are remotely working or in the office, it’s still the same cost. As soon as they sell it off, it’s not a cost any more. Justification doesn’t make the cost less.
I suspect that these big corporations were advised by banks and the government to scale back work from home policies to avoid triggering a real estate market collapse in cities by vacating expensive office space en masse. This could cause defaults by landlords and a housing crisis as workers no longer need to pay premiums to live near offices. An exodus from cities would crater housing markets, which would severely damage the overall economy. Thus corporations are pushing for office returns to shed some staff but also to avert an economic crisis, despite the cost savings of remote work
Since when do big corporations give a shit about bursting industry bubbles? If it’s not their own bubble, they loooooooove to capitalize on the profit margins that come from disasters. Even if it is their own bubble, they’ll find a way to short their own stock to see a big windfall.
Economy collapse -> people have less money -> people spend less money -> the corporation has less revenue -> :)
This is almost guaranteed to have trickled down. If the banks go down due to being overleveraged, everyone suffers. Isn’t it strange all the major companies are doing this, even when it doesn’t make sense? Literally no one else from my team works in my office, they’re all in another state. Then again, I work for a bank, so… Yeah. This is the “if I go down, we all go down” part of the plot
“How bad this company is tanking.”
Y’all are ridiculous. Meta isn’t anywhere near tanking. I don’t know why some of you parrots keep saying this.
They lost ~$10b in net income in Q4 '22 and Q1 '23 so definitely a company in some level of distress, but Q2 saw them ~$7.5b in the black.
What? They make billions in profit every quarter and have been for a long time. Meta isn’t anywhere near being in trouble.
Meta net income
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Q4 2023: USD 4.652Bn.
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Q1 2023: USD 5.709Bn.
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Q2 2023: USD 7.788Bn.
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Q4 2022: Facebook monthly active users (MAUs) – MAUs were 2.96 billion as of December 31, 2022, an increase of 2% year-over-year.
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Q1 2023: Facebook monthly active users (MAUs) – MAUs were 2.99 billion as of March 31, 2023, an increase of 2% year-over-year.
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Q2 2023: Facebook monthly active users (MAUs) – MAUs were 3.03 billion as of June 30, 2023, an increase of 3% year-over-year.
User stigmata is correct and neither Meta nor Facebook are sinking, despite what we might want to believe.
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Sorry should have been more clear. Facebook is tanking. Obviously meta as an org is fine.
Meta knows this is a dumb policy. This is just a way to lay off workers without actually firing people.
Only problem is that this way you probably lose the most valuable people, which can easily find an alternative
That’s built into the model. Stars carry the weight because they’ve shouldered the responsibility. Others will step up… The work will be subpar, but when companies do risk analysis on stuff like this, they know how much gas they can burn before needing to be competitive again. Just another reason why we need unions in the US.
Is there an initiative in the tech sector to start a union?
I am not sure the model would work that well. The problem with loosing the stars is that you are also loosing the know how and the past memory of what you have and that are either irreplacable or hard (or at least long) to rebuild.
If the people that remain are not stars there is a reason, I would not bet on the fact that someone who has no other options would step up, not becauae he don’t want but probably because he is not a star to be in the first place.
Anyway, I agree, in the US you should begin to form worker unions or at least to lobby to eradicate the “at will” employment.
Being fully remote means Meta will not maintain desk space for such workers, who should not come to an office “more than 4 days every 2 months,” Goler’s memo said,
That’s actually just as dumb, it means that if that remote worker comes to the Home Office they can’t stay a full week. Even saying “more than 5 days every 3 months” makes more sense.
I don’t have a problem with this. My office made this rule too, basically you chose hybrid, in person, or full remote. I went full remote. I don’t have a desk at the office, but I’m not required to come in. When I go in there’s hoteling offices, meaning I get an office to work, and theoretically if I went in for a week, I can leave my stuff there, but after that week, I take my stuff and go home.
4 days every two month is WAY too low to maintain an office for a person. Heck even 2 days a week is borderline. Companies want to reduce their floorplans, and that’s reasonable if they allow full remote, as long as full remote means full remote. (not required to come in)
No, I have no problem with not maintaining an office for remote workers. But they are telling remote workers they can’t be on site for more than 4 days in a span. That’s the dumb part. It should have been 5 days, so that remote worker can get a whole working week at the company’s office if they need it.
Oh I totally misunderstood/misread that. Sorry.
That’s fucking dumb as shit, agreed. Then again that gives me an excuse to go home ASAP.
Oof I feel bad 😳
I barely go in to mine once a month, yet have my own desk and stuff
Don’t worry as long as your company isn’t making you worry about it. I just personally chose full remote, but the people who chose hybrid have probably done as you say or less. And even when they do come in for “Collaboration days”, they sit with us in a conference room.
I’m not going to make it an issue, but you’d fit in at my company. Then again we haven’t (And may never have) a mandatory RTO.
Note for non-Americans: “RTO” here means “Return To Office”. (Not Rostered Day Off)
Non-American here: was there a chance that RTO stood for Rostered Day Off?
We don’t really use ‘roster’, and we can spell Day.
😂
Wouldn’t that be RDO?
Meant “Rostered Time Off”. They’re used interchangeably here.
Thank you!
Cool, a severance package from Facebook!
At first I thought, Jesus! Who will work for such a shitty company and then I realized people will do anything for money. Capahtahleezum baby!!
I mean these guys are generally pulling 300 to 700k a year so… I’d return to office for that easily.
Either I’ve been getting royally screwed at the places I’ve worked, or it’s only pretty senior people who are making over 300k.
Also depends on where you live. Masters graduates get 200+ starting in SF Bay and Seattle. Senior can be 500+, Staff/Principal can get 700. That’s not the average but it’s attainable. levels.fyi is not perfect but it’s accurate enough.
In the Bay Area, it’s been pretty easy to snag a 300k+ offer from one of these companies in the past 3-4 years with only 2+ years of experience. Just play the leetcode game.
Hiring has slowed though and the compensation is based on stocks, which have been more volatile.
Depends on the role but most of the impacted folk are engineers. E4 is around 286k a year (now after much of the reset from post covid). E5 (senior software dev equiv so like 5 or so yoe) is 400k a year.
Most of the payment is in RSUs granted.
Lol true. If I am the director or any executive, i’ll do a lot more exploitation for less.
I mean being asked to go to an office isn’t exactly exploitation. It is fucked to ask after promising remote and terminating folks when they say no I’m not moving my entire family. But that’s why tech companies are usually younger folks.
Had a friend who worked there because he needed their health insurance to cover his sick kid. That is so screwed, in the rest of the world that’s not even a consideration.
The messed up thing is that for the wealthy, the US healthcare system is great. I’d be willing to guess that when you’re wealthy here, your experience is better than what you get standing in line with everyone else in a socialized system. I’d still rather have a socialized system here, but you probably don’t need to pity this man.
If I could get hired at Meta I’d be making $200k-$300k more than I do now.
You read that right. Not $200k total. $200k above what I currently make. Which is substantial.
So yeah. Money with a capital M.
There are other things, too. I’ve been to their HQ and it is packed with top-of-their-class young people all smart as hell. There is a definite energy to the place, and they have a certain reality distortion field that makes them believe they’re doing good work.
Plus Meta is a strong company to have on your resume. Everyone knows their hiring standards are high and with Meta on your resume, second and third tier companies will look at you like a god and pay you a lot for stupid work.
I don’t justify any of this. I’m just reporting the way it is.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“As with other company policies, repeated violations may result in disciplinary action, up to and including a performance rating drop and, ultimately, termination if not addressed.”
Meta first informed employees of its RTO efforts in June, saying that beginning after the Labor Day holiday, people who were hired to work in an office should return for at least part of the week.
In a March memo announcing a layoff of 10,000 employees, he wrote that a company analysis found that “engineers earlier in their career perform better on average when they work in-person with teammates at least three days a week.”
Being fully remote means Meta will not maintain desk space for such workers, who should not come to an office “more than 4 days every 2 months,” Goler’s memo said,
From: Lori GolerDistributed work updatesTL;DR:• We shared in June that beginning September 5, people assigned to an office will need to spend at least 3 days per week in person to foster healthy relationships and strong collaboration.• Managers will hold their teams accountable to the In-Person Time Policy on a monthly basis.
To help teams build predictable collaboration practices, we’re asking remote workers not to visit the office more than 4 days every 2 months- unless there’s a clear business reason (team onsite, required in- person meetings) or to attend Meta-sponsored events like Company All Hands, Metamate Meetups, or Hackathons.• Managers will review this monthly, subject to local law and works council requirements, and remote workers who consistently exceed the threshold will be required to transfer to an office and meet the minimum 3 days/week in-person requirement.Remote applications:• We’re moving to a monthly review cycle for remote work applications by org leaders so they can fully assess and understand the impact of these requests on their organizations and sites as they implement their org-specific location strategy.
The original article contains 1,469 words, the summary contains 307 words. Saved 79%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
To be fair, they may lose their jobs if they do show up to work.
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The trouble for Meta employees is that there aren’t many jobs out there with similar compensation.
Even though I’m not in FAANG, I’m in a similar situation. Forced to go in every day, but changing companies would mean halving my pay check. So I go in every day.
