Comment by hurrrr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hurrrr | Hacker News Reader

I work remotely and I'am a big remote work enthusiast and I think that Meta is right on this one. They are (at least at the moment) one of the most remote friendly company among the big tech ones and I think that they are following the plan that Zuck draw. He never said that Meta would become a fully remote company overnight. In fact in may 2020 he said the he expects half of the company to work remotely in 5 to 10 years[1]. Around 25% of the Meta workforce is remote and this figure could increase. They are also the only company that admitted that onboarding is harder remotely. This can happen for a number of reasons (for example, processes not optimized for remote workers and not for an inherently inferiority of remote work) and the fact that they also said that engineers that switch from office/hybrid to remote performs the same as the ones in offices suggests that they are not done with remote work. I guess we'll see how it will end, but I don't think that a cautios approach to remote work must necessarily be considered negative.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/21/zuckerberg-50percent-of-face...

Is the requirement 8 hours on RTO day? Core hours? Majority of workday?

This is actually an important question for me.

I'm currently interviewing with Meta. If I get the job, I'll have a long commute on a train with limited runs each day.

Being able to use train time for work could be the difference between a sane and untenable lifestyle.

Please don't work for Meta. You'd be helping further the largest privacy-violating data collection scheme in the world.

There are also plenty of other companies that offer fully remote arrangements, many of whom haven't sunk untold millions of dollars into commercial real estate and need to be able to justify their investment.

I hear you, and partially agree with your points. For various reasons it's a complicated decision.

They’re trying to pay you more than you currently make, or offer some kind of career growth you don’t currently have, and you have bills to pay and ambitions in life. It’s not complicated. Telling yourself so is only making excuses for the company.

Right now I make $0, and I have a family to feed, house, and provide healthcare for.

Please don't presume that you have enough information to rebuke me.

Well said. I appreciated the tone. Thanks for defending yourself and your career decisions against those that no nothing about your personal circumstances.

s/no/know/

Haven't made that mistake in awhile...

I don’t see how this offers a different take than what I posted. They’re offering you more money than you currently make and you have necessary expenses. So you’re considering it.

Here are the parts of your post with which I disagree:

> It’s not complicated.

You didn't know what tradeoffs I have to consider, so I doubt you can know if the decision is complicated or not.

In actuality, my decision involves guessing at the likelihood of various outcomes, and how they relate to competing ideological goals.

> Telling yourself so is only making excuses for the company.

You guessed (wrongly) about my thought process. Furthermore, I don't see why you had any confidence to make that guess, let alone chastising me based on that guess.

It doesn’t seem so. You are prioritizing your family over ideology. That’s because you are being paid to do so. These are the brass tacks.

I don't think we're using the same definition of ideology.

I'd just like to point out that I think you confused another person who replied (Our_Benefactors) with me, and my read of that person's comments is that they were trying to justify you accepting a job with Meta, not discourage you from taking it.

That said, while I absolutely appreciate the need to provide for your family, if you can get a job offer from Meta, you could get a job offer at countless other companies that aren't directly contributing to the downfall of civilization.

> I'd just like to point out that I think you confused another person who replied (Our_Benefactors) with me,

Oops, sorry :)

> if you can get a job offer from Meta, you could get a job offer at countless other companies that aren't directly contributing to the downfall of civilization.

I've been unemployed for 5 months now, and looking hard.

You may be trivially correct, if I end up not getting an offer from Meta. ;)

Now, as you might expect, I don't seek the downfall of civilization. But I can't think of a single employer whose work is entirely safe from that accusation, so it's a question of tradeoffs and guesses regardless.

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