I'm thankful I was "grandfathered in" by starting a remote role pre-COVID. Honestly I wouldn't be shocked if I'm more productive in an office (due to pressure to seem busy, which correlates somewhat with amount of time actually being busy) but I overwhelmingly prefer remote work.

I’m actually grateful I don’t need to worry about marketing via Instagram anymore.

> I don't think RTO or fewer meetings is going to reverse or even slow Instagram's slide down the enshittification chute.

In my view it's been well down that chute since shortly after its acquisition by Facebook. Facebook bought them as a hedge as young people left the FB platform and, for a time, it's worked to keep users under the Meta umbrella, but as with everything Zucc touches, the end-user experience has been in a state of steady degradation.

In Canada meta pushed back (by not letting you link to or summarize recognized free press news sites) due to laws designed to encourage sharing revenue with news organizations for copying their content and posting it without their consent. The result has been a total vacuum of truth, and the platform is literally a anti-vax, agarthan racists wet dream when you open it up as a new user. It's ripe for replacement. I can't believe it's lasted this long.

The stated purpose of RTO may be more-nimble-whatever.

In practice it makes more sense if you always assume the intended purpose is to thinly veil constructive dismissal.

These memos are always basically admissions of their own incompetence. If you distrust your employees this much and have created a culture where people aren't getting their work done without it being noticed, that's on you.

Isn't it a "we want to reduce our workforce but we don't want to pay redundancies, so we're hoping many of you leave 'voluntarily'.".

Well I don't trust my employer so...

You think this is the tech job market to leave your job, and then what? Try and get in at someone else about to return to office? Freelance? IDK about anyone else, but I haven’t considered a contractor since AI Coding hit hard, I had poor experience with contractors anyhow, now I’m not sure I see the point of rolling those dice again.

It’s kind of a soft market unless you are working directly on AI models.

So, is this IG looking to cut fat by keeping what they considered the most committed employees? Maybe. Is it because most of us can admit that it takes the right people to work remotely and that isn’t a majority? That’s more my take.

And the employees most likely to quit will be ones with responsibilities that make it difficult to do the commute 5 days a week - kids to pick up from daycare, health issues to manage, a social life in the evenings, travel plans - basically the exact category that a company like Meta would want to replace with a younger, more exploitable bunch.

They most likely have a long-term plan to realign team boundaries with office locations, but want to minimize the short-term disruption for people who've moved around the Bay Area based on current working schedules.

I interviewed there in 2024. Said no because they said I would have to commute from SF to Menlo Park 4 days a week. They explicitly said I could not work from the SF office before I even asked.

A ton of teams are already distributed. The RTO makes no sense unless your team is already mostly in one office but that’s not how a lot of teams are.

Tons of team are completely split up across multiple states/timezones.

I think IG might be more local teams than distributed but I’m not sure.

Pre-covid - an entire working team is clustered in the same office and have desks near each other. People collaborate via in-person meetings, hallway conversations and general proximity.

During covid - hiring is mostly remote since companies figure they don't have to be constrained by geography anymore. Employees work at home and collaborate over Zoom meetings. It's difficult at first but everyone adjusts. Productivity is allegedly lower, partly due to the remote nature, partly because employees are slacking off.

Now - employers start mandating return to office. Teams are still distributed, so rather than collaborating via physical proximity employees have to spend their day trying to find meeting rooms and sitting on Zoom, just in the office instead of their homes.

Is the company actually more productive now? Some McKinsey consultant has a slide deck showing that it has gone up from 6.5 to 7.2, so the bosses all pat themselves on the back.

The comment initially confused me, but after reading it twice, I completely agree with you.

I would love to delete the app, but Instagram has really become the norm for dating and connecting with people. The opportunity cost of not using it in your 20s is significant. I hope to delete it once I’m fully settled, but that might not happen anytime soon given the modern dating culture.

Sometimes, I wish I could live like the Amish.

other divisions within Meta have recently made similar changes —- more time in office, less meetings. i’m guessing the orders are coming from the top but they’re allowing each org to roll out the changes “independently”