Microsoft mandates a return to office, 3 days per week

Comments

• jjjalljs@ttrpg.network ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Workers should unite and tell management to get fucked.

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• spit_evil_olive_tips@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Puget Sound-area employees: If you live within 50 miles of a Microsoft office, you’ll be expected to work onsite three days a week by the end of February 2026.

  “return to office” mandates are always, always, always a form of stealth layoff.

  people structure their lives around their commute (or lack thereof). if you can work from home and don’t have to go to the office like it’s 2019, it opens up a bunch of places to live that wouldn’t be feasible otherwise.

  this will force a bunch of employees into godawful commutes, or require them to move to be closer to the office. that’ll be relatively easy for younger employees who most likely rent an apartment and don’t have kids, but much harder for older / more experienced people who own houses, have kids, a partner with their own job, etc. lots of people will just quit instead - constructive dismissal.

  also, I suspect many people who aren’t familiar with the Seattle area will read “50 miles” and think “about an hour’s drive”…lmao. 50 miles as the crow flies, in Seattle’s geography, can be a multi-hour drive, possibly including a ferry ride, before considering traffic delays. for a pathological example, Brinnon to Redmond is 35 miles in a straight line, but 130 miles driving distance, or 75 miles driving distance if you take a ferry. (and there can be a multi-hour wait just to drive on to the ferry during peak times)

  even if you constrain it to 50 miles driving distance - Tacoma to Redmond is 43 miles driving distance according to Google. if you ask it for driving directions and specify “arrive at 9:30am” you get an estimate of “typically 1 hr to 2 hr 30 min”. public transit takes 2 hours, and that’s assuming you’re leaving directly from downtown Tacoma.

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  • Powderhorn@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Brinnon is a weird example. I had to look it up, having lived in and covered Seattle, Skagit County and the Kitsap Peninsula. Per Wikipedia:

    Brinnon is a census-designated place (CDP) in Jefferson County, Washington, United States. The population was 907 at the 2020 census.

    We’re seriously citing a population of 900 people on the Olympic Peninsula as somehow central to the RTO order? Like, look I have rather intricate if outdated knowledge about traffic patterns in Puget Sound, WSF delays, the whole nine yards. Just getting from the U-District to West Seattle can be an hour slog.

    So why Brinnon?

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    • TehPers@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      For what it’s worth, there are a lot of people across the sound who either work remotely or commute everyday. The ferry, in travel time alone, is ~45m (from start of boarding to end of getting off, assuming you take the car you’ll need with this commute). This is of course assuming you make the ferry and don’t end up waiting for the next ferry or two due to traffic (each ferry carries only so many cars), and assuming no issues with their schedule (they are behind all the time).

      Brinnon is a weird example, but an example involving the ferry isn’t too far fetched. I have a friend at a big company who lives on that side, and I considered it myself (and would have, had I been able to afford the home I wanted anyway).

      Without traffic, Bainbridge Island to Redmond is ~1.5h. With traffic? Not happening.

      Good news about MS specifically is that it does have the connector (their commute busses). It doesn’t go everywhere, and definitely not across the sound, but does help with some commutes if you happen to be close to a stop.

      Anyway, RTO has historically been a terrible policy designed to shrink the workforce without layoffs and has resulted consistently in worse outcomes for companies.

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    • spit_evil_olive_tips@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      We’re seriously citing a population of 900 people on the Olympic Peninsula as somehow central to the RTO order?

      I said “for a pathological example”

      if you don’t know what that term means, you can look it up.

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• megopie@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  As other’s mentioned, probably more a way to fire a bunch of people without having to do so explicitly.

  Microsoft seems to be on a warpath this year regarding layoffs. I wonder if maybe they’re trying to compensate for some giant black hole in their budget. Like, keep the costs looking stable even as some specific department balloons out of control without providing commensurate revenue. Wonder what that could possibly be?

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  • HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Which of their product lines could turn dev time into money?

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  • sanzky@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    the free coffee for employees, probably.

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• smeg@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I don’t know if things are different at Microsoft or across the pond in general, but from people I’ve spoken to who’ve been given similar “mandates”, they’re not as compulsory as they first sound. If you’re reasonably good at your job and your manager is keen to keep you then you can get away with just ignoring these rules. More what you’d call “guidelines” and all that.

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  • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Capriciously applied rules is a terrible system. We hold up ideals like “rule of law” and “democracy” but as soon as capital is involved it’s right back to “I am the law” and tyranny.

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    • tmyakal@infosec.pub ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Well, yes. Businesses are run as dictatorships, not democracies. This is one of the reasons why no one who would “run a country like it’s a business” should be elected to public office.

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  • HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Which makes it work really well for stealth layoffs. If you don’t have a manager willing to bend the rules for you, you either have to show up or the company has a reason for firing you.

    And if you do have a manager willing to bend the rules for you, they now have the ability to recind that offer if performance drops.

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