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Will workers hired as Remote all be laid off in next wave?
48 points by huitzilopochtli on Oct 6, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 109 comments
Apple, Meta, Amazon, and now even LinkedIn have asked workers to come back into the office. They’ve all made passing comments that they will continue to support remote workers, but from my perspective the writing is ultimately on the wall. Meta has even implemented limits on how often these workers hired as remote are allowed to come into the office, but have not divulged the reason for doing so. Given that many of these companies began hiring and marking certain employees with designated offices as far back as 2 years ago, would signify this has been a long tail deliberate plan.

What are the odds (0-100%) that these permanently remote workers will be heavily targeted in the next large wave of layoffs?




I personally don't care what FAANG does. They all sound like horrible companies to work for, and I don't care for the products they produce either.

I was working remotely before the pandemic and will continue to work remotely in the future. It's great that we have more opportunities now than before, but they always existed. So what the "mainstream" or "big tech" world does in current year is their own business. I won't judge anyone who works for them, we all have our reasons for making the choices we do, but I don't think it makes tons of sense to ascribe too much weight to what the largest tech companies do. They might represent a significant portion of the market but it's a big world and there's tons of smaller companies out there doing much "better" things in much "better" ways.

My philosophy is that I'm going to live the life I want to and not worry about what companies I don't like do. I don't work for them and, with the exception of Amazon, I don't use what that they produce either.


Why do they sound horrible? This is a serious, non provocative question. :)

I personally loved working for Google. Low workload, great work-life balance, amazing perks, mind blowing salary, potential to do really cool stuff that hundreds of millions will use, doing really cutting edge things that almost noone else can do, ridiculously good internal infrastructure and tooling so I can focus just on my tasks, kind and friendly colleagues, nice offices. Everything about my day job and things I worked on (at Google Research) was great.

I disapprove of many other things company does, but they were completely separate from my work.

I have many friends at Meta, company I disapprove way more - but their sentiment is exactly the same.


Many people would not like the cognitive dissonance of working for an organization that does many things they disagree with.

But from what I hear, it really depends where in google you work. I hear juniors/new grads are worked to the bone


I agree with both your points. The experience varies and depends a lot on the manager.

And about the cognitive dissonance - but to me, personally, it's not like there is one Google, but it's many companies with completely separate goals and ways of acting. And it's not just a metaphor; different orgs really do operate on sometimes opposing goals (like Android vs Pixel vs Research - I was in the middle of that, but won't elaborate publicly). I think long term it should be broken up by regulators, but that's a different and polarizing/political topic.

But back to my original point - a lot of people have amazing experiences there, so my question to the person posting it remains - how is everything about those jobs horrible? This brings me a huge cognitive dissonance, as it's so different from my and my colleagues experiences.


>But from what I hear, it really depends where in google you work. I hear juniors/new grads are worked to the bone

The workload is not too much, but there's a lot of ambiguity and very little hand holding. Even as a newer senior engineer, my work is hard. Not 50+ hours a week hard, but a somewhat stressful 45 hours a week.

But it's fun and interesting so I'm happy, plus the comp is extremely good (not quite Netflix or JS/TGS level, but pretty great).

I'd rather be a little stressed than a lot bored.


> doing really cutting edge things that almost noone else can do

like what, adding more ads in the already ad-covered search page? It doesn't need tens of thousands of engineers for that and it is not rocket science. It is gone the time that working at google and being a worker at google means something amazing. Lots of normal low achieving people at big tech nowadays which the only achievement is getting to Google/Facebook/Microsoft/Uber/whatever and then benefiting from it.


You don't think AWS, GCP, Azure, foundational models, TF, Spanner, Aurora, TPUs, M2 CPUs, realistic AR and more are impressive???


Not really. Linux was impressive. What you described is just normal incremental development. Even less impressive is to be responsible for one line of code of it. I don't deny it is an amazing engineering to create a machine with 10s of thousands of engineers working in one direction (mainly, increase shareholders value).

But being one of those ants doing the work? Nah, not impressed.


Hey the API key on your page is down.


to echo your response:

I know people who worked at Amazon and hated it. And facebook and loved it. Google people did the google world tour (transfer offices every 6-9 months and live everywhere in the world). Pretty great experiences at Dropbox.

The life-changing salary is also pretty great.

I also know people who got so bored at those jobs working on the same one tiny thing all day long.

So many varied experiences. To say they all suck would be quite disingenuous.


I know some folks (all Senior+/Staff level) who worked at Amazon and, while they would never say they loved it, they also won't say they hated it. The common denominator they all share is that working there had such a deep impact on how they operate today that they would absolutely work there again, even knowing what they'd be walking into.

I would never work there, personally. I will (and have!) walk from any employer who regularly demands more than 40 hours a week out of me.


I've just heard a lot of horror stories from colleagues about every single one of them. To be fair a lot of the complaints are typical of working for any large corporate machine. I'm not anti-corporation or anti-capitalist but the bigger a company gets the more bureaucracy, red tape, polices, layers of middle management and overall inefficiencies and burdensome "structures" get put in place.

I'm happy to hear of a counter-example with respects to Google. Since I've tried to de-Google my life as close to 100% as possible (though I do watch YouTube and I own a Pixel so I can use GrapheneOS so there's that, sigh) I don't think I could bring myself to work for them on the sole basis that job satisfaction suffers when I don't like what I'm making. But that's separate from toxic company culture, which is what I hear from these places (but to be fair these companies have so many employees that individual experiences can't NOT vary).


You're hearing from people who had negative experiences and allowing it to color your perspective of the experience of, like, well over 1,000,000 (? I don't really know, just spit-balling here) people who currently collectively work for these organizations. That's kind of short-sighted, right?


Not at all.

1) These are colleagues I know and trust and have a lot to say about their time there. I wouldn't pay attention to them if we didn't have certain things in common, re: cultural expectations and opinions on what a good place to work for looks like, which increase their weight. It's not like I'm reading random Tweets or something (I don't have a Twatter account and wouldn't work there either).

2) I have worked with a lot of middle managers that came from FAANG. They have had this weird kink / fetish about FAANG companies and how projects and people should be managed, and they constantly talk about their time at those companies and how they are taking these processes and cultural opinions directly from that world. Many are some the worst people I have ever met and they are directly representing those companies. It might be a small sample-set, but if that is any indication of the types managers that work at those places then it's enough for me to not be willing to take the risk.

3) Facebook gave us React and GraphQL, Microsoft gave us Windows & Telemetry, Google gave us a world of tech surveillance and Apple gave us... well... every Apple product ever. Those companies can't NOT be toxic based on their products. It might not be fair to single them out since they're not the only companies to produce evil but I can infer what goes on in those corporate offices after 30 years in this industry, and seeing how people from that world operate. That was implied in my initial comment. You don't have to agree with me about how evil they are, it's not a crime to have wrong opinions :P


>but the bigger a company gets the more bureaucracy, red tape, polices, layers of middle management and overall inefficiencies and burdensome "structures" get put in place

eh, this hasn't been my experience working for pre-seed, series A, F50, and FAANG companies.

In my experience, small companies often let product or MBA folks dictate a lot of what happens, and generally engineering is looked down on as worker bees. At FAANG, this isn't the case. ICs have the same level or respect and authority as managers and individual engineer opinion is taken seriously.

Because there's so much infra in big tech, you can spend an entire career barely interacting with MBA/PMs/process people.


The reason it affects all of us is because those firms have been defining the high-end of market compensation.

And, for clarity, compensation isn't just the money — which they generally do max out — but it's also all the intangibles. It's the free gyms and laundry services, the vast campuses with endless free restaurants and kitchens, and, yes, the formerly-free-wheeling remote-work policies and location strategies.

Once these firms start slashing comp [1] and their stock prices are unaffected (or even boosted), it "inspires" everyone else to start looking around and seeing how they can pay their own engineers less.

Today, it may just be FAANG that's slashing remote perks — tomorrow, all the other companies will follow, and maybe they'll be "inspired" to "adjust" their health insurance benefits at the same time, too.

[1]: It is also a fascinating coincidence to me that all these firms declared RTO around the same time.


> Today, it may just be FAANG that's slashing remote perks — tomorrow, all the other companies will follow, and maybe they'll be "inspired" to "adjust" their health insurance benefits at the same time, too.

If they do it, it means the market doesn't value software engineers as much anymore so what could you do? That isn't what is going to happen though. But all of those big techs can become next IBMs, HPs, Yahoos.


Such a breath of fresh air to read this. I choose to work remote and only look at companies that do that.

My first was Canonical. Since then I worked at a startup and when they went office first, I left even though I had not fully vested. I choose life over career and its a tough choice at times but I’m happy with it :)


> I was working remotely before the pandemic and will continue to work remotely in the future. It's great that we have more opportunities now than before, but they always existed. So what the "mainstream" or "big tech" world does in current year is their own business.

I've been remote since 2015 and, arguably, it's made it harder. Before COVID it was mostly a niche thing, but now the cat is out of the bag and I'm competing with a lot more.

The RTO backlash is also in force, so the big F500 companies I used to snipe roles from are now fully owned by corporate overlords.


> I personally don't care what FAANG does. They all sound like horrible companies to work for, and I don't care for the products they produce either.

They're still market movers: if they dump a lot of talent, that will affect wages, and the people who work at those companies learn habits that they bring to other companies. I don't particularly "like" them, but I'm very concerned that they slowly fizzle out rather than make sudden moves.


this is the way


Something you have to understand about being remote - at any time, this was true decades ago - is that you are not there when people talk and you can't correct them or defend yourself. People with commutes and requirements to be under the eyes of management resent those who don't have that problem and can all agree on that.

Remote gigs will always be more tenuous than prison-jobs.


> is that you are not there when people talk and you can't correct them or defend yourself

You also can't correct things when you're in an office when meetings are had that exclude you. So even with that sweet commute you can still be reference while "in the office", just not in the room where Big Decisions are made.


I mean you can sit next to your coworkers and ask to join meetings they're in. Everythings relative I guess


I had a wonderful remote working gig for about 8 years. My first year was in-office, then I negotiated part-time remote for 1.5 years and full-time remote for the remainder of my time there. This is where I worked for most of the '10s.

> you are not there when people talk and you can't correct them or defend yourself

And you'll never suspect it from the people who are doing it the most / worst. As a mid level, I worked under a lead who was 100% in-office and who was, on a daily basis, stealing credit for all of my work with engineering management while at the same time pushing for me to get a promotion! His career / role catapulted into the high-rises, he threatened to leave unless X, Y, and Z demands were made, they capitulated because they believed he was so crucial, I had no idea any of this was going on until years after the fact, and I made Senior. Whoopity fucking doo.

I was later told that this person was eventually fired, because he found his personal Peter Principle level and had run out of subordinates to abuse, but he's still out there in industry fucking things up for other people, I'm sure.


There is something to be said about being "known" and visible in the office vs running invisibly in the background.

I know my job I feel like is kinda invisible. There are a few key people I talk too on a regular basis but outside of those small handful of people most of the company don't know I exist except for the rare times I show up the office.

I will also say that as much as I prefer WFH, there is still something lost that just can't be replicated at home without a constant video connection (which... NO). That is the random conversations that can happen that may lead to just a friendship or actually lead to a change at work. I have been part of a lot of projects that would have never happened if it wasn't for a conversation over lunch, in the elevator, or whatever.

People have pain points or ideas that are never formally made for one reason or another.

Personally what I would really like is a mix. WFH 4 days a week and come in 1 day for a meeting, social, etc day. I barely knew my coworkers until we started actually going in every once in a while and doing things outside of work as well.


> There is something to be said about being "known" and visible in the office vs running invisibly in the background.

There shouldn't be, but I agree that in reality there is something to simply being visibly toiling. I learned on HN a month ago, this is called the "Costanza Disposition"[1] based on a Seinfeld episode.

You walk the halls in the office with a very serious, determined look on your face, always with laptop in hand. Always drifting past where the Directors and VPs sat. Always striking up conversations with people in leadership. Always visibly demonstrating vague "bustle" and "activity." A naive manager would observe this behavior and think to himself "Ahh, yes, the glorious buzz of Business™ Being Done! My empire is so active!"

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC8PzhNuh7w


Can you clarify your premise here?

When I worked in a building, I would go to meetings, and there I would see co-workers and people would talk to each other in meetings. When I work remotely, I join virtual meetings, and I see co-workers and people talk to each other.

In both cases, people can use chat to say things without me seeing. If I am physically in a building, but people are not in the same room as me, they can talk to each other without me hearing.

The only premise that could be true is that within one organization, people that cannot be remote may resent people that can.


There is a certain activation energy required for discussions to take place, which is quite high in a remote setting.

This isn't a problem by itself, however remote companies need to have a lot more processes around information transfer and team building, which is something companies don't need to actively think about for the most part if they build on-site teams.


They're talking about the hallway chats that happen after the meeting, when people move from the conference room back to their cubes. Gotta talk about something as you walk, and if that happens to be in the form of a misrepresentation of your work, you not only can't do anything about it, but you'll never know. In my experience, that's more a reflection on a poor org than the situation. Before the pandemic when I wanted to have a hallway debrief with my coworkers in the office, I pinged them as such and we talked via Skype (then, it was years ago) about the meeting. Sure they'd started without me, but caught me up. It was fine.


>not only can't do anything about it, but you'll never know.

And what would you do if you are there in person? Challenge them to a duel?

This whole scenario sounds very paranoid to me. In my experience if you treat people decently and perform OK most co-workers won't talk negatively about you behind your back. Or maybe I just never noticed... it did have 0 impact on me though if it happened.


This, but it doesn't even have to be as nefarious as misrepresenting your work.

Someone senior who didn't quite understand some point but didn't want to ask about it in the meeting* will ask a version of it in the hallway just outside the door.

They'll appreciate and increase trust in the person who gave them the answer. There's not even anything nefarious about that; it's just normal human behavior.

* Positively: because they didn't want to derail the meeting and slow everyone down, or negatively: because they didn't want to admit to not being omniscient. Either way, it happens.


I interpreted the meaning to be something along the lines of “remote workers can feel like they have less control of big decisions if an organization also has office workers”. In my experience, it’s an illusion (or delusion).


> People with commutes and requirements to be under the eyes of management resent those who don't have that problem and can all agree on that.

If you have found that to be true, you may have had a streak of pettiness in your work culture. I've found that the healthy organizations I've been a part of don't resent each other - if they have a concern they raise it, discuss it, resolve it, and leave it be.


When I worked at my prior job there always office politics at play. People would send slack messages, emails, whatever and gossip even if you were sitting right next to them. Even if you corrected them or defended yourself, then you become stuckup or snobby etc.

If you're in an environment where people are treating you like that, remote or not, it's not due to how you work. You just have shitty coworkers or managers.


Not to argue either way, but this can happen in meetings behind closed doors while in the office. Anyone can say anything while not present even if in the office.

I think it is more productive to do a good job. If someone says false things and decision makers takes them at face value there is some other problems at an organization.


> you are not there when people talk and you can't correct them or defend yourself

Eh. Since the advent of chat systems like Slack I think this happens anyway, remote or not.


Haven't been in a non-fully-remote org in over 5 years so really can't relate


If I need to eavesdrop on off-the-cuff conversations in order to justify my job, I won't last long at that employer in any case.


The only real answer here is "who knows?".

It's often said that tech workers have no need for unions and (not to reopen that box yet again!) this is exactly the kind of scenario where tech workers could benefit from union representation, even if they're highly paid. Absent that these companies can do more or less whatever they want with remote workers, they're not a protected class.


I'm in a union and got a 1.5% raise, benefits have decreased and we're forced into hybrid working. I'm in a country where I can't just be fired without notice so that union doesnt do much for me there either.

I'm just pointing out that unions don't mean you get everything you want.


That last sentence is a total strawman. Unions are not there so you get everything you want. They are there to turn individual negotiations and protection into group and collective one. So it's not just a single junior programmer fighting for their rights, but potentially all company SWEs fighting for this junior programmer rights.

If Meta faced a complete strike similar to writers' strike, their workers could achieve similar goals like writers did.

Or not - but nobody promises it, that's silly.


It's not a strawman. Union membership is thrown around here like a solution to all problems.


Yeah, so no union often turns out better for me because I ask for more.


You are always going to have a minority like this, but they are a minority. The data shows unions are better for most others. Get while the going is good or something like that. I'm sure there's room for highly paid consultants in a more organized future, with better wages and stronger labor protections for FTEs.


> I'm just pointing out that unions don't mean you get everything you want.

Sure, a crap union is a crap union. But union representation in general is more likely to result in the rights of remote workers being protected than, what, asking nicely?


> I'm in a country where I can't just be fired without notice so that union doesnt do much for me there either.

In most countries, this didn't happen out of nowhere.


Point out the underperformance of unions and the response is always yeah but they got us weekends off 100 years ago. What have you done for me lately?


Union membership has been declining for decades. They’re not as effective when they don’t have the numbers to back it up.


Working on the 4 day workweek in the US at the moment. Progress takes time, it's impossible until it is done.


If I had to guess I'd say UAW will get destroyed here and the end result will be more mexican factories but we will see. Seems extremely unlikely that they get the 4 day work week either way.


That's just doing 5 days of work in 4 days..


Why are you working 5 days if productivity can either be maintained or take an acceptable reduction to go to 4 days? People work to live, not live to work.


What Unions are working on this and what progress has been made?


UAW: https://www.google.com/search?q=uaw+4+day+week | https://www.npr.org/2023/09/11/1198394085/uaw-big-3-automake... | https://www.axios.com/2023/09/25/uaw-4-day-workweek

900 US school districts because they can't retain teacher talent otherwise: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/school-districts-4-day-week-tea... | https://www.ncsl.org/education/four-day-school-week-overview


Well of course they aren't! Unions are there as a way of leveling the power balance between the owners and workers. That unions still terrify big companies to the point of firing organizers or closing entire locations should be telling. They're not around to prevent every inconvenience, they're around to prevent abuse of the workforce.

For example, if the Games Industry (using them as an example because they're notoriously the worst work-life) unionized, a shop could tell their management "No, we will not engage in crunch for a month."

Like how a fire suppression system doesn't prevent you from burning your food, unions are there to prevent bigger issues.


That's not my experience though after doing sprints for the better part of a decade.


> I'm just pointing out that unions don't mean you get everything you want.

Maybe not, but if the companies can band together and collectively decide what is best for employers[1], then it's only fair that employees should be able to band together and collectively decide what is best for employees.

Unions are for collective negotiation; getting what you want is a nice side-effect of collective bargaining.

[1] Yeah, don't tell me that they don't collude. Actual communications between them is not required for collusion.


> it's only fair that employees should be able to band together and collectively decide what is best for employees.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that it's unfair for employees to form unions if they want. Employees who want to do that absolutely should be able to.

Not everyone wants to be in a union and employees who don't want to be should also be able to do that.


You can't be fired because, at one point in time, unions did their job well. The problem is that, nowadays, they often don't, but nobody wants to fix the state of things.


Worked at a couple FAANG companies and from what I've seen, management is absolutely right that remote work, overall, is inefficient. There was a Blind poll and I believe half the people admitted they were slacking off more frequently while remote.

However, being laid off is just a completely different matter. Depending on the company, the motivation for the layoff could significantly differ. Some did it to save costs, others have quotas to meet, etc. But I believe it is fair to say there is no observable correlation between remote work and chances of being laid off.


As someone else said, I think that poll is fundamentally flawed. People just didn't realize how much time they "wasted" being in the office.

For me:

When I was in the office I would be fairly regularly distracted by coworkers (which does have some advantages but is a loss when its every day) which causes me to loose my focus. Now I am "distracted" by my cat wanting on my lap which doesn't cause me to loose focus (if anything that keeps me in my chair for longer).

I would need a break from something and browse news and the internet A LOT in the office. I needed that mental break.

I would often try to force myself to not take a break for appearances causing the actual work output over the same period of time to go down.

I feel more comfortable in my home environment since it is decorated how I want so I am less stressed.

Finally the biggest one? I work more hours now than I did before. I am no longer commuting so I don't feel stressed if I need to finish something before going offline. Or if I am doing something that only needs half my focus I may work on it at night while doing something else (like maybe the final rounds of finishing a script that has a fair amount of downtime while it runs each time). Or if I just turn on my computer a bit earlier in the morning and do a quick something and then get back to my coffee, breakfast, whatever.


We can do anecdotes for days. I have worked at 3 remote companies, 2 transitioned from in person. It was clear to me that productivity at the 2 that transitioned became much worse due to remote. Productivity was never great at the other. I don't think it has much at all to do with hours worked but collaboration absolutely takes a nose dive when remote for the average employee.

I love working remote for the same reasons you do. Doesn't mean I think it's good for the company though.


> people admitted they were slacking off more frequently while remote

Honestly, I think people didn't realize just how much they slacked off while in the office. It was just a lot less fun and a lot less free.

Over a long period, I can sustain about 3-5 hours of truly hard productive work per workday. I can grind out an all-nighter once in a while; I can do an isolated back-to-back 10-12 hour day, but I can't sustain 8 hours of actual, hard nose-to-grindstone work per day on average (and I'm not ashamed to admit it).

In the office, this looked like dicking off with co-workers. At home, it looks like throwing in a load of laundry or taking the dog for a 20 minute walk. Those "feel" much better (because they are) and that feeling better I think people report as a form of guilt that they're slacking off more.

Talking to your co-worker about the TV show you both follow or the local sports team is every bit as much slacking off; it just doesn't engender any feeling of guilt.


There is no guarantee that slacking off more frequently means less efficiency.

Slacking off but then returning to focused, deep work, without distraction can absolutely be more productive than working consistently in a distracting environment. I've even found that "slacking off" is embraced by companies who have worked remotely. In one prior gig, letting the team know, "Hey, I'm going skiing for a couple hours and will be online this evening" was not at all an unusual message to see. People work when they are going to be productive and "slack" when they wouldn't be productive anyway. Remote work means you can optimize for your personal productive times... and still slack off more. Best of both worlds.


> remote work, overall, is inefficient

I dont see how one anonymous poll at a FAANG company proves that. Just because you are doing busywork doesn't mean it's efficient. FWIW I agree with your other points.


Don’t base any opinion off of something you see on Blind. That’s a very self-selecting group who participate there, and probably the majority of responses were just trolling.


It is revealing how everyone implicitly agrees that there will be another large wave of layoffs.


The seduction of pessimism.

https://collabfund.com/blog/the-seduction-of-pessimism/


Very likely for the remote workers that aren't essential for the company, for FAANGs.

Small/middle-sized companies will fight for those talents in the market and offer the remote work flexibility they want.

But I doubt those big employers that pay top salary will continue to have remote workers at all.

The top Big Tech companies are clear monopolies in a way or another and need to continuously find new markets to not be dependant only on their monopolies, because they know it's just time until regulators just jump in and tear apart their dirty money making machines.

In order to do that, they'd rather have people working in a office in the hopes of them being more commited to support them on that goal.


I think the best way to judge this is to look at management. Are they remote or in office?

I work for a large corp who's CTO is fully remote. As an engineer, that gives me confidence, & the fact a decent % of other CxOs, VPs, &c. are too just bolsters that.

A sibling commenter - @keikobadthebad - described it well: if decision-makers are meeting all in-office folk in person, you'll be naturally excluded from the important conversations. In contrast, if decision-makers are fully remote, those important conversations are more likely to be a level playing field.


This sounds like a great interview question from the interviewee, when it comes to evaluating a remote role: "Are the decision makers that affect my work in-office, remote or a mix?"


> Meta has even implemented limits on how often these workers hired as remote are allowed to come into the office, but have not divulged the reason for doing so.

The simplest answer is that they literally don't have enough space for all of the workers to be in the office at the same time, right? They probably didn't have enough space to begin with if a lot of the workforce was remote.


Untrue. Most of the buildings were predominantly empty most of the time, even in MPK and FRE. Many of the remote buildings were ghost towns. After the closure of multiple buildings and eateries, some floors of some of the buildings became quite full. Ironically, I did shared desks in a building that was absolutely jammed full of non-engineers who literally sat around and socialized all day loudly.


These tech companies were never well optimized for such a drastic increase in remote worker. All of their structures, managers, and the way they work rely heavily on in person meeting. I think with companies like that you really do have less job security. There's studies that managers feel remote workers are doing less work because they can't see them working. There is also the problem that there's much less personal distance between you and the manager so its much easier to just fire you. If it even feels like firing a person to them or a face on a screen. That's up to you to decide.

I do think the data shows that people are happier and more productive when they can work remotely. It means less time commuting, less distractions, and reduced cost having to pay for buildings that remain empty at night. It seems like the benefits are numerous but I get why the arrangement doesn't work for every company.


Totally depends on the company. From what I understand, apple is very much against remote work for all but the outstanding superstar level talent.

Amazon is letting top performers stay remote, I don't think this will change.

Meta is probably ahead of the curve in that they're formalizing the process. It sounds like if you're new to the industry and meta you have no chance of remote, but if you prove yourself in office for a bit you're eligible.

My take: remote will soon be a thing that some senior level folks are eligible for, and for standout people. I expect big companies will stop hiring any L3/L4 remote at all. I expect you'll get more scrutiny as a remote employee regardless of level. But I also think if you're a solid performer, your remote options will actually go up over time after companies figure out how to weed out the slackers and whatnot.


A lot of think about remote work in a very binary way when really it depends on a lot of factors.

Some engineering jobs benefit from close collaboration others don't.

A lot of engineers prefer remote work so not offering remote roles limits your talent pool, this is especially true if your office is not based in a place with a lot of hot tech talent.

If a company that over hired during the pandemic and now needs to cut back it's workforce it's relatively easier to get those new hires to leave by asking them to return to the office.

Companies that embrace remote can reduce costs since they don't need offices or to provide on-site perks (free food, gyms, travel expenses, etc).

Whether there will be a mass layoff of remote employees is going to depend mostly on the company.


> Meta has even implemented limits on how often these workers hired as remote are allowed to come into the office

right now there is a big logistics problem with bringing teams back to the office. Office campuses were never designed for 100% occupancy, some percentage of teams are going to be on vacation, traveling, sick, or WFH.

Managers know this and they're leveraging it against their bosses as an explanation for why they can't force their teams back in the office- there's not enough space!

So the property management folks are getting squeezed to figure out how to fit 1000 people in an 800 person building, even though they'll realistically never see more than 500 at once.


I don't believe it will be as a wave, but more like fewer and fewer new job offers being offered as remote.

At some point, workers will feel the pressure as remote offers become scarce. This will affect everyone. Even the best have bills to pay.

Then when ~50% of workforce comes back to office, the remote ones will loose a lot of influence on the market. Is possible that we'll see a wave of layoffs on that moment.

I have no odds to bet. But maybe is time to think about were we want to live in the next 5 years.


Depends on your contract I would say. I'm working for a company (not FAANG) that has recently mandated RTO (partially, 2 days/week) but they couldn't enforce to some employees like me because in our contracts it's stated our regular place of work (in mine, it's the city in which I live, which is around 300KM from the nearest office). So, I'm still working remotely.

This in Europe. Perhaps it's different in other places.


While working for an agency full-time (software), somebody asked me what I do. I said "My job is to make you feel good about whatever it is I may or may not be doing around this place."

This is applicable to all jobs in all industries, full-time or remote -- produce, and make your employer feel good about you being there, and sometimes even that's not enough to avoid the chopping block... but you know what? That's just showbiz, baby.


This idea that your top priority as an employee is to make your boss feel good at all times, is a thing in the US, but it is not universal to every where in the world.


100%, I have family from Russia who often cannot comprehend the cultural workplace nonsense endemic to America.

Meanwhile, to me (guy from Midwest), the maneuvering and relationship management is second nature. Exhausting at times, yes, irrational, always, but in most cases people just want to get things done, and IMO simply being patient, present and available to reduce friction for all involved goes a long way towards success in your chosen field.


I think these companies need good engineers more than good engineers need these companies.

And at least in the company my brother works (a big tech co but not FAANG) almost 20% of the staff resigned when it was made mandatory for employees to come to office. So I think that is gonna be a huge factor for a lot of these companies.


If you excel in your field you don't need to worry. If you are just a bee no remote job is safe.


> They’ve all made passing comments that they will continue to support remote workers, but from my perspective the writing is ultimately on the wall.

I'm not aware of any of them continuing to support remote other than for select roles in the internal or external messaging.


That's just their problem. The paying is good enough for the ones that are willing to sell themselves to create those soul-sucking algorithms used by the mentioned companies. One thing none of them deserve is empathy - as they have none for the whole world.


Thanks everyone for commenting. I’ve read through them all, and my takeaway is that if you are with FAANG or another big tech, then yes.

If you are at a small or midsize and are considered a good contributor then you have some time.


Laid off from Meta because I was the only remote employee on my team. First, they did RTO, then assigned -> shared desks for everyone outside of Menlo Park, and finally layoffs.


Probably they'll be given the chance to switch and align the # of days in the office to the company's standard, otherwise "we need to let them go".


I'm only aware of those companies doing that. I haven't heard anything from Netflix, Slack, etc. They seem to be in support of remote work long term.


I think the chance is fairly high. Remember, compelled attrition by making doesn't have to be announced as a layoff. Hence the MS salary freezes.


umm.. wouldn't an agreement about where you work and when be the kind of thing you would have written down in your employment contract?


Aside from a status flag in a database (which doesn't actually reflect reality), I don't have anything about location in any contract. I doubt that's atypical, at least in the US.


Needs Ask HN: in title, unless things have changed


FAANGs are not all of software engineering, neither do they set tends for everyone else

so no, remote work os definitely here stay


Here's my favorite side effect of this latest scam: MUCH lower salaries for the same level of work.

How does it work? Well, BigCorp X says, hey, you can remote! So we just need to pay a salary for the CoL in Jackson MS. That's fair! Also we're moving our offices there. So, theoretically, since anyone can work there, and that's where we moved our headquarters, that's our pay scale. Then, you pull that rug, and now they come back into the office - still making 1/3rd of their previous salary. Except now they're in Jackson, with the region's only employer that doesn't involve chicken in some way.

Companies loooooooove it when they're the sole employer for hundreds of miles. Love it love it love it.

It's frickin' brilliant. I'm looking at some Mech Eng salaries for Level 2s, and I swear I'm seeing some 40k numbers. That is bananas. The ONLY way they can square that is they're adjusting L2 money for the CoL in Alabama, or maybe Zaire.

I mean, it's brilliant . . assuming you're trying to get rid of as much payroll as possible, so that you can wave your MBA wand and leverage the whole sinking ship into something resembling cash. Wait a second, I've got Dave Calhoun on the phone.


I worry about this, too. "As long as all the IT guys are remote anyway, why are we paying them North American / European salaries? They have tech guys in India and China, don't they?"


0% odds of something completely drastic, too many of the best went remote.


At the end of the day, companies don't really care that much if they lose some of "the best." A lot of "the best" are changing jobs on a fairly regular basis anyway.


> companies don't really care that much if they lose some of "the best."

SWE salary numbers would suggest otherwise


That SWE salaries, especially at some companies, are high in the aggregate doesn't mean that companies will necessarily bend their policies too far to accommodate a specific SWE who thinks they're special enough that the policies don't apply to them.


Are those numbers to retain or to attract?


100% unless they are from India.


Yes.


No


Every place I've ever worked before, the first people laid off were always the remote people. Working remote, to me, is being layoff bait.


I have colleagues (in Europe) that actively run a second job in parallel (contracting).

One was a programme manager in the country that I am (EU) and at the same time was also running a programme in Saudi Arabia. He enjoyed the 'teleworking', and he had to go to the office 1 day per week and 1 day per month in Riyadh.

The local 1d per week, was 4.30-5.00 on Fridays (yes it counted as normal day). For the Riyadh gig he would take a day off from the local job, and fly over on a Thursday evening, and return on Saturday.

He was making LOADS of $, and when the locals pushed for 3 days, he just quit and kept the Saudi gig, as he wasn't able to be seen with two laptops in the office.

If you know how to do your job well and fast you can pull it through with 10h per day (combined work).

So, when the employers insist on getting people back in the office 2-3-4 days a week, I think they are on to something. I do not imply that 99% of people do this, but some/many do.


I don't, but why shouldn't they be allowed if they're able to pull it off and still perform adequately?




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