Snap Employees Told to Be in Office 4 Days a Week Starting in February | Hacker News Reader

Snap Employees Told to Be in Office 4 Days a Week Starting in February

bloomberg.com

22 pointsmfiguiere19 comments

I feel like this is a strategy to avoid doing layoffs because of the severance payout but still have a lot of employees quit.

Hopefully it'll reduce their future hiring quality as anyone worth their salt likely values wfh

Do you really think that more talented people prefer working from home?

The question is whether talented people are willing to give away their time for free (commute) to an employer when other employers are available who'll not ask for bonus free time in addition to properly paid time. I'd guess no.

Is it true that pay is typically the same across remote and office-based companies?

So far, there are remote companies offering the same comp as in-office, yes. What the current economic climate does to this, we'll see

Giving away time “for free” is one side of it. But giving away your “space” for free is a downside of WFH in my opinion. Most folks will need a larger home with higher energy bills and taxes to accommodate WFH successfully. There’s no compensation for that.

How much space does one need to use a laptop? I would argue that working from home is one of the single biggest advantages people with good time management could possibly have. The additional time gained could be spent towards solving the problems you described. After all, you're no longer bound to that apartment anymore. You can make a plan and move to a lower cost of living area. You can leverage the circumstance to your advantage. I agree with OP in the sense that talent is made with practice. Those hundreds of hours spent in your daily commute to the office, plus all of the other distractions, could be spent learning new skills or solving personal problems. "Talented" people go to the office, solve their problems in 50% of the time or less, and pretend to be working the rest of the time. At home, they invest that time on improving themselves in a myriad of ways.

Or we can waste it. There are plenty of folks who do that no matter what circumstance they are in. But those are not the talented folk OP was referring to.

Circumastances vary. Some people want to get away from home due to spouse, kids, pets, or other distractions. Other folks dont have any of those problems and can work much better from home. It just all depends.

The additional amount of money spent on energy is inconsecuential. Charging my laptop and flushing the toilet costs a few bucks a month. Taxes? You could overcomplicate those I suppose. I file my taxes in the same way I did in the past. Sure I may be leaving some money on the table. But it is inconsequential compared to the salary/bonuses one could receive if one leverages the WFH situation as I described above. I save almost $1200 a year on gas by working from home. I dont really care about optimizing taxes for a few hundred bucks. Its not worth my time.

Just offering another perspective.

People hate to hear this but the most talented younger people want to work in office at least hybrid because you learn more and get more done. Yes, at the expense of commute time. I understand families change this dynamic

And you think you speak on behalf of all 'the most talented younger people'?

Talented or not, young or not, there are people who do and who do not want to work in an office.

Pretending all of one type of employees feel the same is detrimental to the conversation.

Please provide some proof for the 'get more done' part.

Most people do less in the office.

All right, I'm just going to say it: all this HN bullshit where people make some choice and then go online to say "more talented people make this choice" is seriously lame. It's teenage levels of puffery and transparent as fuck.

"The smartest engineers will WFH"

"The most motivated youngsters will go in to the office"

Clearly no one has told people making these comments that it is transparently obvious they're trying to make themselves sound like they're in the "smart" category. Looks pathetic.

    RcKaG3gb

Not true at all.

If this represents a change in employment terms, couldn't that be considered constructive dismissal (maybe the wrong term)?

https://archive.today/W7cbQ

Edit: What a letdown, TFA is devoid of content beyond the headline. Here is the full article text:

> Snap Inc. Chief Executive Officer Evan Spiegel told employees that he expects them to be in the social media company’s offices in person 80% of the time starting in February.

> “I believe that spending more time together in person will help us to achieve our full potential,” he wrote, according to a memo reviewed by Bloomberg. That means four or more days per week in the office, he said -- with some flexibility allowed for work-related tasks such as client meetings to count as in-office time. “What each of us may sacrifice in terms of our individual convenience, I believe we will reap in terms of our collective success.”

Stupid nothing burger headlines.

Bet he’s not in the office 80% of the time doing real work. “Do what I say not what I do”. Or else.

They’re trying to get people to quit. I would.

Why? Let them fire you, file for unemployment citing the change in employment terms.

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