Facebook to shift permanently toward more remote work after coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-to-shift-permanently-toward-more-remote-work-after-coronavirus-11590081300 <comment><USER2> [https://archive.md/XBbjV](https://archive.md/XBbjV)

[https://www.theverge.com/facebook/2020/5/21/21265699/faceboo...](https://www.theverge.com/facebook/2020/5/21/21265699/facebook- remote-work-shift-workforce-permanent-covid-19-mark-zuckerberg-interview)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for posting the article link. Archive.md, which is a fantastic service, started throwing a 403 Forbidden error and 1001 error from Cloudflare a few days ago. Any idea what's causing it? Cleared cookies and cache for it already. However I'm able to get to your archived article.

<comment><USER4> Cloudflare dns doesn't support it, if they're your dns provider. Some browsers are using them for dns over https which may be the culprit.

<comment><USER5> More specifically they don't support CloudFlare's DNS. The operator of Archive.(today/is/md) has decided to specifically provide bad IPs when the EDNS client subnet extension isn't provided, which CloudFlare's DNS doesn't provide due to privacy concerns.

A lot more discussion on this topic: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828317](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828317)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Related ongoing thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23264521](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23264521)

</comment><comment><USER7> I do feel like HN is having a rehash of a conversation we've had many times this past month. I'll post my favorite comment [1] on the matter of remote salary adjustment, which captures a key market effect we all seem to forget (Bay Area specific):

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"Cost of Living" adjustments are a red herring, what they really are is really "competition density". There are plenty of tech companies paying great salaries in the bay because they have to, otherwise they would just go work for someone else. On the other hand, if you lived in Oklahoma you aren't going to say no to $LOCAL_OFFER+10k just because bay area salaries are $LOCAL_OFFER+90k.

As long as this disparity exists, I forsee bay area salaries and CoL still being high. Until companies move headquarters out of the bay, the trend will continue.

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Similarly, in this thread, Consultant32452 states [2] that the real argument is between those who can demand a high salary regardless of geography, and those who can only demand a high salary _because_ of geography.

The mistake is many people in the latter group think they are in the former.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23162855](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23162855) by hn user nemothekid [2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23265158](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23265158) by hn user Consultant32452

<comment><USER8> > I do feel like HN is having a rehash of a conversation we've had many times > this past month.

It is not only on remote work, same with Google privacy issues, Zoom issues, micro service/monolithic, Electron... Most of the big conversations on HN have been going on for a long time and still do

<comment><USER9> Most conversations of humankind are going on for a long time. Why are we?

<comment><USER10> Because we're human?

<comment><USER11> Or are we dancer?

<comment><USER12> My sign is vital

<comment><USER13> my hands are cold

<comment><USER14> Go back to Reddit, jeez.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I might be in a minority here, but I really don't feel like full time WFH is more productive. It could be indicative of my work place's culture only, but I feel like there are many more meetings now & communication is much harder. Also, it's nice seeing everybody at work, getting lunch, having a coffee break with people, whiteboarding, etc. There is a huge social aspect that is lost with WFH that zoom can't replace. Imo that reduction in socializing has reduced my work performance because I've noticed I just sprint ahead for 4+ hours straight and burn out really hard at the end of the day.

<comment><USER16> As an employee, it doesn't matter if it's more productive. You greatly increase your pay per hour of work given that you don't have to commute and you definitely don't spend 8 hrs of work consumed by work like you are forced to when in an office.

Productivity as an employee is about meeting a bar (that you partially define along with your employer). Caring about maximizing productivity is the goal of your employer. But you have some leverage in this job market so it's not like they can squeeze you dry. Remote only helps the employee side of that adversarial relationship.

<comment><USER17> Why do you see the employer/employee relationship as adversarial? Perhaps you are working in the wrong company. You need employers as much as they need employees. It's a myopic view.

<comment><USER18> An employee/employer relation is mutually beneficial but that doesn't stop conflict. The employer is still going to try and optimize to get more out of that relationship than it puts in. The employee should also do the same.

Just because you're working together in a circumstance that benefits the two parties doesn't mean each party is not also working against each other to some degree to better optimize their self-interests.

An employer may need an employee to create something and by creating and selling that thing, an employer and employee may both get a cut and benefit. None of that prevents the employer or employee from attempting to get a larger cut or do less work (invest less time) to receive their cut. Extremes to either side cause the relationship to collapse but there's definitely wiggle room in the margins beyond a 50/50 split.

I've yet to meet a single employer that doesn't try to optimize on labor costs in that relationship through some component or another, directly or indirectly.

<comment><USER19> This is a pretty fascinating perspective to me, one I had never considered. I had always thought of the employee who is paid more than the value they provide as being lazy and a leech. But that's exactly what the corporation is doing: trying to make a profit by paying for less value than they capture from their employees.

<comment><USER20> I don't see my employer as paying less than the value they get from me. I see my employer as accepting a risk I'm unwilling to accept. If I go do things on my own I have so many things I have to deal with. Assuming you start a business then insurance, taxes, deductions, payroll (gotta pay yourself from your company) plus I have to market my skills, network, find customers, negotiate contracts, and always worry if I don't I'll go hungry or miss rent. Or, I can just show up at some other company as an employee and in exchange for getting less than the full amount they take care of all of that and all the risk.

<comment><USER18> >I see my employer as accepting a risk I'm unwilling to accept.

Which is also true. At the same time, risk is highly relative which is why this situation is feasible at all. What's risky for you to do as an individual is not of the same order of magnitude of relative risk when you consider scaling of available resources.

Example, Alphabet, Amazon, or Company Y decide to invest $1 million in a new SaaS 'X' effort with some monthly fee in an attempt to build a successful product/service. These companies have arrays of pre-existing successful products/services they've built (typically diversified) that generate stable profits. Relative to that sort of expected profit, SaaS 'X' is a drop in the bucket. If 'X' fails, it's the same absolute monetary loss ($1 million) but the relative risk of losing $1 million isn't significant to any of these businesses, it's small relative to their total resource pool of disposable assets. Loss recovery will also take significantly less time.

On the other hand, if I as an individual go through the effort to form an LLC, develop SaaS 'X' myself and fail, $1 million is nothing to scoff at. Even if you're in the higher income scales of our industry and making $300-500k+/yr for labor, you're looking at ~3-4 years or so of potential losses and values that are probably near or a bit more than your total personal assets, at the very least I'd say 10%. If you start an LLC and get a loan or have some investor drop money on you, $1 million is still likely going to be a lot relative to your loan. It's highly likely that if 'X' fails your business will fail. There's high relative risk here (there are some mitigations strategies from your personal assets but it's still significant). You're probably going to face noticeable financial hardship or have to revert back to the labor market due to business small failure rates.

Risk is mitigated through scale, snowballed growth, and diversification (amongst other strategies) in our economic system through initial successes that often occur either through true innovation/market creation/penetration and/or sheer luck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Similar to other people on Twitter and Shopify's announcement thread, I think this might be an excuse for corporations to reduce their commercial footprint and save money by opening applicant pools to larger areas of the country with cheaper CoL (and perhaps the world, different time zones are tough though).

What about work visas? Will this encourage more visas, or will citizens become unsettled after more cost effective labor is remotely hired while they're left competing against far cheaper world economies. I can see arguments for both expanding H1B program, and making it more difficult/selective.

Something about this doesn't feel right, the pandemic isn't nearly as bad as was predicted. It's been devastating, but nothing like 1918. That is to say, perhaps these drastic actions of mass WFH will have implications we can't predict yet, especially at scale.

Will cities become less congested? How about home life, if WFH becomes standard in 5 years time, and some positions that are easily remote are hard to find physically, will home life become disrupted? (Currently domestic violence, child abuse has soared, though this is most likely due to the stress of the pandemic, and not the WFH itself. Through school, work, etc tends to allow those at risk to form social networks, and reach out for help from their abusers.)

There is something to say about spending time away from immediate family. Some people need the break, others are synergetic and can spend all their time together. Depends on the persons involved. But let's not celebrate just yet, there's obvious economic incentives, and it isn't clear this can be reliably reversed. We're rarely given the full list of motives, which may not be in our best interest.

<comment><USER22> I never realized how many people relied on work and school to reduce contact with their family until this pandemic started.

I don't know where we go from here, though.

<comment><USER23> I suppose I've seen the two extremes of this. People who are really annoyed with their family, and others (mostly women) who probably won't go back to work when this is over because they actually get to see their kids. Not sure which cohort is larger but I do see some benefits with people, who want to I guess, having an avenue for spending more time with their family.

That said I personally hate working from home. Never ever thought I'd say it but I long for my office cubicle as my work has totally monopolized what's usually my own personal space for side projects and zoning out.

<comment><USER24> You're one of the lucky few with a cubicle. Do you think you would feel differently if you worked in an open office?

<comment><USER23> I sort of have a "half" cubical, with a ~5' high wall divider to my right and in front of me (and my back is to the wall). If I worked in a true open office you're right I'd probably be more reluctant to return.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've read a few of these work from home related articles here on HN and I have to say, I'm super surprised by how many people are both vehemently against the idea of remote and generally pessimistic for what it would mean for society.

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but my main hobby outside of work is outdoors related. I consistently spend my Friday nights driving 3+ hours to the mountains. The idea of being able to up and move to a mountain town, save the hours I'd be commuting to work AND commuting to the mountains, is so exciting to me. And that's on top of just the happiness I'd get being able to look out my window and see (what I consider) nature vs the cookie cutter buildings of suburbia Silicon Valley. Where are the cyclists, the surfers, the skiiers/snowboarders, dirt bikers, rock climbers, etc etc in these threads? I really can't believe there are that few of us...

But on top of just hobbies, I'd be so excited to see what society could look like in a much more remote world. I think a lot of people would spread out and leave Silicon Valley (but not everyone obviously). I think you'd see more small/medium sized towns pop up across the US that would develop their own uniqueness and character. Traffic deaths would likely go down because people would drive less. Maybe general physical fitness/health would go up because people aren't sitting in their cars and have time to exercise? People working minimum wage jobs would likely have better access to housing as demand spreads and isn't as concentrated. We could see a maaassssive change in the lives of the population, and I'm optimistic it would be for the better.

Note: I'm not saying everyone should be fully remote, or that working remote works for everyone, but the general lack of any real optimism about what life COULD be like in these threads is surprising to me.

<comment><USER26> I think it's much more likely that, rather than empowering employees to live rich and fulfilling lives outside of work, a massive shift to remote will drive down wages everywhere to the level of the cheapest locations where talent can be found - so instead of living on an SF salary in Coer d'Alene you'll be living on a Lagos or Jakarta salary - while obliterating the distinction between "work life" and "home life" and massively sharpening the knife of competition hanging over every engineer's head

This may be different in firms where the workers actually have a say in the management of the company, but god knows there aren't too many of those

<comment><USER25> "I think it's much more likely that, rather than empowering employees to live rich and fulfilling lives outside of work, a massive shift to remote will drive down wages everywhere to the level of the cheapest locations where talent can be found - so instead of living on an SF salary in Coer d'Alene you'll be living on a Lagos or Jakarta salary"

I disagree. If companies felt they could readily get the same level of talent outside the US, why wouldn't they do that currently? Just set up their business in a foreign country and recruit internationally? And if they're still hiring domestically, why are you so sure they're going to dramatically reduce salaries? They still have to attract talent. If an employee wants to move from the bay area to Wyoming, and their employer says their pay will be cut 50%, what's to stop them from applying to Twitter or another company allowing full remote with (I'm assuming, I haven't checked) a much more competitive salary?

"while obliterating the distinction between "work life" and "home life""

I've seen far too many emails sent by people at 11:30 PM and followed up with another email at 6 AM for me to believe this hasn't already happened. Not to mention the self imposed aspect of it (neither of those emails NEEDED to be sent at those times).

<comment><USER27> Last couple of companies I worked at, they are already outsourcing "average" work. We had a QA manager in the bay area, and then he had a team of six people in SE asia doing QA/QA automation. On the engineering side we had a team of 20 engineers in eastern Europe working for less than 30k/year usd working on bug fixes and test coverage, UI fixes, modifying legacy code from the original monolith that didn't change a whole lot etc

In the bay area we only had five engineers, mostly focuses on architecture, R&D, new products etc, and even then they only came in two-three days a week mostly for face to face meetings. The VP had a lake house in tahoe and would work remote for 2 months every summer.

I can see a bunch of legacy code maintenance/qa work moving offshore further, but there will always be a core group of five to ten engineers who meet at the central office a couple times a month. Remote will increase but humans still need face to face contact periodically.

<comment><USER28> Yeah I know a bunch of QA companies in Vietnam. How did your company find them? I am Vietnamese American myself and have spent a lot of time in the region. It is an amazing place w/ a hungry yet educated youth population, great food, beautiful beaches and quite fast internet. Surprised not many American companies heading there to recruit.

<comment><USER27> We initially hired the QA manager as our first QA hire, then he built the team in his country. After a couple of years we paid for his visa and he lives in the US now and has been with the company for over five years.

We went through Vietnam including Nha-trang on a tourist trip two years ago, of which I think Nha-trang is sort of their tech capital, I was really impressed with the level of development there and how modern it was, although I didn't talk with anyone directly in the industry while I was there. It definitely had an international modern vibe compared to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

<comment><USER28> I would replace Nhatrang with Danang. Danang is the next big coastal tech hub now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "Facebook will reduce the pay of workers who move to less expensive areas."

Personally, this is a deal breaker for me. I don't want to get paid less for doing the same amount of work. In a remote world, deciding where to live should be a personal decision of how one spends their income. Facebook doesn't pay employees less because they decided to drive an expensive car to work.

Facebook, along with all other tech companies, make crazy amounts of revenue per employee. The pay reductions will be a rounding error on the company's budget. Why not keep salaries the same and get the absolute best talent in every market across the world?

<comment><USER30> Companies (e.g. Mozilla, Gitlab, now Facebook) often forget another side of the coin - "less expensive areas" most of the time means _worse quality of life_.

Also, all of those companies say "less expensive areas" while they really mean "lower wage areas" \- which doesn't necessary align with the former preposition.

<comment><USER31> > Companies (e.g. Mozilla, Gitlab, now Facebook) often forget another side of > the coin - "less expensive areas" most of the time means worse quality of > life.

Exactly. Also, if you live in the "middle of nowhere" or even outside a major metro area on the east and west coasts of the US, the quality of healthcare substantially declines. Considering that the third leading cause of death in the US is preventable medical errors, living outside of these areas can literally be a death sentence. It is only a matter of time before it is likely to become the case for an individual, healthy or not.

As somebody with 2 rare neurological diseases affecting my peripheral nervous system, plus type 1 diabetes, remote work helps tremendously. But, living in the boonies would literally, in no exaggeration, kill me. So, I need a salary that allows me to live in a major decent metro area, plus allows me to pay for my healthcare. That is non-negotiable. Every day, working in the US is looking less appealing. I can legally work in select places in other parts of the world, and plan on leaving the US. There are other places in the world that have universal healthcare, that do not have huge disparities in quality across similar geographical areas.

You can find out more about healthcare quality worldwide and the US by examining the data on [http://HealthData.org](http://HealthData.org)

<comment><USER32> Moving from "daily commute distance" to "occasional long trip distance" would still be huge. Moving 2-3hrs out from major east and west coast metros would massively increase affordability.

<comment><USER31> You are missing the point: I still need a lot of care, and the quality of it allows me not only to work, but to stay alive. I have at least 1 appointment per week for my medical care, if not a minimum of 2. Sometimes I can have 4 appointments per week. It is not just a matter of having to commute, however long that may be. In an emergency, where I am located matters, and living 2-3 hours outside a major metro area can easily hasten my death, with my medical issues. Rare diseases tend to be systematic, with limited treatments. They are also not easy to treat either. In my case in particular, I am technically more susceptible to having other rare conditions too. My rare diseases are immune- mediated.

But, where I live absolutely matters. I also require a lot of healthcare contact, where living 2-3 hours outside of a city just does not work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> In this thread: SF engineers realize how well paid they are. Did not complain about 2x salary bump when moving to SF. Will complain about 0.5x when moving out of SF. Signs of realization that pay is only weakly correlated with skill yet to be seen.

<comment><USER34> > Signs of realization that pay is only weakly correlated with skill

This is of course the big problem. Facebook is admitting that developers elsewhere in the world are just as good as developers in Silicon Valley. Or if you want to put it another way: if Silicon Valley is special, it's NOT because the developers.

<comment><USER33> Personally, i think there was a time where we genuinely needed to solve hard engineering problems - around 2010-2015 when a ton of companies figured out concurrency, distributed systems, scaling, way better web tech, smartphones etc.. in those times companies needed a LOT of good devs, so the network effect Silicon Valley had was valuable. And the VCs saw huge empires to be built and so much money on the table, so high salaries were easy to justify.

Now the market is crowded, scaling is a simple economic problem, the network effect is turning on its head and there isn't any revolutionary software to build on the horizon. Times have changed but the narrative hasn't caught up yet.. its going to suck when it does honestly. Software is just so commoditized and cookie cutter at this point i can't see it being a great career for much longer.

<comment><USER35> There are still a lot of hard problems to solve, they're just cross- disciplinary.

Software is the infrastructure of the 21st century and if you step out of the tech bubble to things like material science, biotech, etc. you'll see that their infrastructure is _garbage_ despite there being really big returns available.

Developers who can marry modern software to those domains should remain in high demand for decades.

<comment><USER33> Do you have any companies or spaces you would recommend where theres hard problems but low signalling/barriers to entry? I'm autistic AF (no joke) and learn new domains in a frenzy of 3 months of joy and digging but its not easy to prove/signal that.

<comment><USER36> The best one is state or local government. You'll be able to make a lot of change and get tons of experience with a low barrier to entry.

Anything related to public safety (including transportation) probably needs the most tech talent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Here's an interesting quote from the verge version of the article

"We ran these surveys and asked people what they want to do. Twenty percent of our existing employees said that they were extremely or very interested in working remotely full time. And another 20 percent on top of that said that they were somewhat interested"

Another way to read this, is that 80% employees are not interested in remote. Companies doing this at large will probably realize that remote work is not popular as it made out to be.

[https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/21/21265780/facebook- remote-...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/21/21265780/facebook-remote-work- mark-zuckerberg-interview-wfh)

<comment><USER38> Wouldn't that be 60% are not interested. 100% - (20% very interested) - 20% (somewhat interested). People who are somewhat interested do not count towards being not interested.

<comment><USER37> I don't know how the survey was worded. But if they asked me, would have said "somewhat interested", in that I want to work from home 1-2 days a week, but no way all 5 days a week

<comment><USER39> > extremely or very interested in working remotely full time

It sounds like you are not at all interested in working remotely full time

<comment><USER40> Correct, but it sounds like there was no option for "strongly interested in working remote part-time".

What other option is this person supposed to pick then? Saying "not at all interested" skews the results of the survey to mean that this person is not interested in remote work whatsoever.

Imo in the absence of "strongly interested in working remote part-time" answer, picking "somewhat interested in working remote full-time" is the most rational choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Open access article: [https://www.theverge.com/facebook/2020/5/21/21265699/faceboo...](https://www.theverge.com/facebook/2020/5/21/21265699/facebook- remote-work-shift-workforce-permanent-covid-19-mark-zuckerberg-interview)

> In a move that illustrates how swiftly the COVID-19 pandemic is reshaping > the global economy, Facebook said today that it would begin allowing most of > its employees to request a permanent change in their jobs to let them work > remotely. The company will begin today by making most of its US job openings > eligible for remote hires and begin taking applications for permanent remote > work among its workforce later this year.

> "We're going to be the most forward-leaning company on remote work at our > scale," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an interview with The Verge. "We need to > do this in a way that's thoughtful and responsible, so we're going to do > this in a measured way. But I think that it's possible that over the next > five to 10 years — maybe closer to 10 than five, but somewhere in that range > — I think we could get to about half of the company working remotely > permanently."

</comment><comment><USER42> Is this the start of the end of Silicon Valley (and other major tech hubs?) I know I'm being dramatic, but they can hire smart developers anywhere in the world. You could say what works for them won't work for a young startup but I'm not so sure honestly

<comment><USER43> > but they can hire smart developers anywhere in the world

Sure they can, but the Silicon Valley has an immense human capital in skills, talent and knowledge that you can't find easily in the rest of the world. The type of complexity, the scale of the systems and the engineering culture that you can find in SF is not common around the world. My experience as a developer in an European country is that it is really difficult to encounter engineers with a real experience in developing truly complex systems and companies with true engineering cultures. This is simply due to the fact that the majority of the companies that need that high quality of engineering and are willing/capable to pay for it are based in the Bay area, therefore creating an ecosystem that is unique in the world. Of course there are a lot of exceptions, but I don't think the "they can hire smart developers anywhere in the world" is as easy at it may look.

<comment><USER44> These high-quality engineers and researchers have moved from all around the world to be in SV, it's not like they love to live in SF, LA, NYC or even in the US. They would easily work from their homes and close to their families in their countries, even with half of their current compensation.

The effects of such decisions are going to be immense; people in the developed countries still live in a bubble thinking they are not going to be affected, but things will probably change dramatically the next couple of years.

<comment><USER45> > They would easily work from their homes and close to their families in their > countries

But what if they wouldn't? For people from some countries, getting to live in the West is a major benefit on its own. (I have to say I'm a bit afraid that the WFH shift will make immigration way more difficult than it is now.)

<comment><USER44> Moving to the west might be a dream for a lot of people but also requires sacrifices. Removing the "immigrate to work" factor from the list of sacrifices will make a lot of people to return to their roots and still work remote to their dream jobs and companies with a great compensation which is probably 2x the local one, unless they have already created a family there. I can't say this will be definite for every country worldwide, i am more biased from the crisis-hit European countries, e.g. Greece, Italy, Spain, which faced tremendous talent migration to richer countries during the last 10 years and i can say that most of them would easily return back home if they could work remotely to top-notch US companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Potential downsides include:

1\. Increased eye strain from staring at a screen all day. Look up "Computer Vision"

2\. "Zoom" fatigue. Less participation in meetings because interruptions need to be repeated to be heard.

3\. More hours sitting in the same chair in the same position.

4\. No pre/post meeting conversation to catch up/tie up loose ends. (This wont work in a zoom meeting where you cant turn and lower your voice to the person sitting next to you).

5\. Now no second place. The US is already losing it's third place [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place) . Where are you going to make friends and find a romantic partner?

6\. Transfer of real estate cost to employees. Especially couples. Now you might need two offices in your house.

7\. Machine learning employee monitoring programs. i.e. spyware on your own computers. Is your APM up to par? Cant fake me you scrag.

8\. Video monitoring in your own home. Can your boss see (and hear?) you working at your desk?

9\. Habit building: used to hit the gym before heading home? Now it's less convenient to get there.

10\. You now have to feed yourself, at your own expense. You get to clean the mess too.

11\. Live in a the city in a tiny bedroom or studio apartment? Do you have roommates? Have fun working in that environment all day.

12\. Attention seeking children/pets at home while you're trying to work

13\. No more office perks.

14\. Have an annoying neighbor who wont turn the music down? Live next to a hospital?

I could go on

</comment><comment><USER47> As an aside: the announcement started at 10:00 Pacific and Mark continued to speak for an hour.

This story (and many others!) were created and posted well before any of the details were mentioned.

I'm not saying that's bad, but it was strange getting e-mails from people with links to fully formed news articles even while I was watching the announcement live.

<comment><USER48> It's very common for large companies to give stories to journalists early with an embargo date/time.

#notspeakingforfacebook

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Managed mixed teams before. Best of luck to FB management on getting things right.

I would prefer either one without mixing. One shoe in one shoe out is a great way to make it extra hard to manage.

<comment><USER50> As a remote worker I've seen it done well and I've seen it done poorly. I think you have to go remote first, with all meetings and communicating being inclusive for the whole team. If you decide something face to face, send a summary via slack or email.

Anyway details aside, it can be done, it's just it has to be a deliberate effort from everyone in the office.

<comment><USER51> Totally correct. The default modes of communication should be asynchronous, or if a real-time meeting is required then everyone should be on video in separate places, even if most are in the office. This prevents situations where the remote workers are at a disadvantage because of a bad audio or video setup. If the audio sucks for everyone, they'll find a way to fix it (plus it's way easier to capture individual audio than a room full of people).

The benefits are also there for people who go to the office since there ends up being less tribal knowledge and more written down or documented somewhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> These are the requirements for an existing employee to move to full-time remote, according to the all-hands today:

1\. Level IC5 or higher (this is what most would call "senior").

2\. Can't have performance less than meets expectations in last two reviews.

3\. Permission from team and manager.

<comment><USER53> Sounds like Scientology's requirements for making trips out of the compound.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Thank you Facebook for being a leader and forcing competitors to at least consider the same, and other companies to cargo cult it.

More jokingly: I guess Facebook employees didn't get the hint when they got the biggest open office plan in the world. Zuck must have been very confused when they made the worst office in the world yet people still showed up. Now he's pretty much telling them to stay away. I assumed he's tired of interacting with "people" all the time, while building a social network.

</comment><comment><USER55> I am surprised that of the pages and pages of comments that I have read (about 500+ comments), few discuss the potential implications of (a) having virtually all of a business's communication (not just the emails and such, but now also the meetings) potentially tracked and monitored, and (b) whether a remote workforce would be even less well equipped to identify/call-out improper corporate behaviour. Would the Google employees that called-out some of the surveillance projects, or the Uber employees that called out harassment exist remotely? And if they did, isn't it just so much easier to get rid of them? "Susan will not be joining the call today. She no longer works here". A scenario in which HQ gets to know everything while every individual is forced into need-to-know seems dystopian to me.

<comment><USER56> I don't know how much I think it would have an effect. Google employees didn't know about the surveillance projects because they found out on-site, they knew about them because Google chose to make them known. Plenty of companies keep secrets from their employees, and those secrets largely remain safe despite employees working on premises. And outside of Google, who had until recently a very open culture of critiquing decisions, almost all calling-out happened through non-company channels.

And is it really so much easier to get rid of them? Presumably they'll have the same legal protections they previously did, and having to be physically removed from the building isn't exactly a major limitation on firing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Hmm...I wonder if I'll be hearing from them again. I've been recruited a few times by FB, but the relationship ended when I told them that I won't be commuting into the city to work in that massive bullpen.

Unlike a lot of folks, I don't have much against them. The people I've interacted with have been a decent, diverse, crew, and I use the platform fairly lightly.

The chances are better than even that I wouldn't be considered a "cultural fit" with the company (I'm a bit "long in the tooth," and I've found that's a "showstopper," these days).

Also, I specialize in writing native Apple software in Swift. I don't think that's a stack they are really interested in.

Still not sure if I would take any jobs there, but it hasn't gotten past the initial phase anyway, so it has not been a decision that I've had to struggle with.

<comment><USER48> > The chances are better than even that I wouldn't be considered a "cultural > fit" with the company (I'm a bit "long in the tooth," and I've found that's > a "showstopper," these days).

Anecdata: I'm 40+ and as far as I can tell, I fit in just fine.

> Also, I specialize in writing native Apple software in Swift. I don't think > that's a stack they are really interested in.

A recent earnings release said that 90+% of FB ad revenue is from mobile. Between Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsAp, IOS is definitely a company priority (although I don't think we've publicly released stats on Android vs. IOS).

I don't actually know if/how-much Swift we're doing vs. ObjC (I'm on the server side of things, not the client)

<comment><USER57> The people I talked to described a massive ObjC monorepo (Instagram). Not sure about the FB app, but you guys did invent React, so I suspect that platform- dedicated solutions are not high on the guest list.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I've added the news on Facebook's permanent WFH policy in this spreadsheet where I've been tracking WFH announcements: [https://airtable.com/shrC1mvKjwntaqocO/tbl73UY1jDmReLge7](https://airtable.com/shrC1mvKjwntaqocO/tbl73UY1jDmReLge7)

<comment><USER59> This is really useful. Thanks for accumulating this data!

<comment><USER58> No problem! I'm glad you found it useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> saiya-jin Brainstorming over a coffee/lunch/whatever, pair programming/debugging (especially debugging!), and generally meetings in person can't be replaced effectively by any video call. It just doesn't work, and never did. Maybe with proper VR one day it will, but I will be retired by then.

Folks here who benefit from commute cut will keep celebrating WFH like new age of something, but for many companies, especially multinational corps, that's desperate temporary measure and it sucks for most folks in one way or another.

Managers don't want it, many employees don't want it. Don't keep your hopes up just because few companies change their policies a bit to look more attractive for new hires. Also as other state, expect some salary re-adjustments based on that.

</comment><comment><USER60> As a city guy, I'm somewhat concerned about how this pattern of remote work may permanently change life in the cities. I enjoy living in a densely populated area and being around people walking to and from work and having spontaneous interactions. If knowledge work becomes largely remote then I think cities could lose a lot of this vibrancy as people may not have a lot of reason to cluster in this way in the future.

Side note, Richard Florida's "Rise of the Creative Class" talks about a lot of the effects and benefits of people clustering in cities (but in my opinion he only does a so-so job talking about the causes), and I'd be curious to see what other urban planners think about changes like this.

<comment><USER61> On the bright side though, cities might become more diverse (instead of being tech bubbles where only programmers can afford rent). It may also undo some of the brain drain happening to cities in the middle of the country, which could revitalize / modernize them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> One should keep in mind that all the "forever" claims by corporations are forever only until some VP quits. The moment the productivity of remote employees goes measurably worse than the one of local employees, there will be immediate reason to reverse these plans.

Yes, some companies are 100% remote and they do well, but I think it is because they hire from another less competitive (for compensation) pool. I.e. they pay low end silicon valley salaries in cheap markets and manage to get very high-end talent.

</comment><comment><USER63> I don't think Facebook should adjust pay of workers who move to less remote areas based on the area. Why compensate differently for the same value creation? If they do go this route, I hope they make it so that remote works still come out ahead (on net savings) of the big office sites. The cynic in me views this as a purposeful policy choice to PREVENT most people from taking on the new remote work allowance. In other words, this may just be a free PR splash to show they're onboard with the trend.

> Among the advantages of a dispersed workforce, Mr. Zuckerberg said, is that > it will enable more demographic and ideological diversity if recruits aren't > required to work in tech strongholds like the San Francisco Bay Area.

This is of critical importance in tech, especially with companies that control the digital public square such as Facebook or Twitter. Allowing employees to live in different political climates, near family, in different lifestyles (more rural), etc. is badly needed. Otherwise, the world's digital public squares fall victim to the ideological monocultures of San Francisco and Seattle.

<comment><USER64> Let's just say they keep pay the same. All the employees who stay will look at those who moved to Pennsylvania and bought a 2br 2bath 2,000 square foot condo for $300k and say "hey, that costs $1.5 million in SF. Why am I not being compensated for the higher cost of living?"

<comment> kube-system Just wait until they hear about the people building new 3br homes in PA for $300k.

<comment><USER65> you can buy a nice new house in most of the country including many of the largest cities in the country. Only that people always try to find reasons why the cities that are cheap are not cool enough for them

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> For me, my commute reduced from 1 hour each way to zero and that 2 hours of my life that I get back had a huge impact on my productivity. I am an engineer and I feel that I collaborate and prioritize using asynchronous messaging so much better. Even though I was really working only 40 hours, it felt like I was working for 60 or even more when I was working from office

</comment><comment><USER67> A large number of comments here looks like every employee at Facebook is exceptionally skilled and critically important. I read somewhere only square root of total employee strength are doing critical work in the company.

Now I do not have any proof of this but I am working at company which would have may be 5K work force in IT organization. Here I am regularly surprised that hardly 10-15 names out of 100s pop up every time on any important issue for projects which I have some relation with.

Doing same analysis with facebook would mean there would be 250 or so employees who can seriously negotiate salaries with them for being critical to company. Of course some people would get lucky or unlucky despite being less or more important. But I think this is delusional to think that most of ~50K strong workforce in FB will be able to get their compensation demands like bay area salary in middle america accepted by company.

</comment><comment><USER68> There's a lot of people who are treating remote work as binary; it has to be 100% remote or 100% onsite. I think that some will benefit from it (those whose commutes are long for example), and some may have children at home and thus can't work as productively.

Could it be possible to work from home most of the days, but not all of them?

</comment><comment><USER69> Cool. Cool cool cool.

I don't live in US and don't want to immigrate at the moment for a variety of personal reasons. But I am competent and professional, and would be happy to deliver just as much as a SF-based engineer for half the pay.

(When I said cool, I meant, it's really cool for me. It might not be as cool for a US-based HN reader).

<comment><USER44> Exactly! Most HN readers don't realize the real amount of talent outside of US waiting for this opportunity. There are thousands of people who would easily work at any top-notch companies but were just not willing to leave their home towns, their families, friends, local lifestyle etc. And now they can easily work to such companies with /2 or /3 of the standard SF wage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> They are saying the first wave of WFH will be in cities were they have offices already. In many of those cities Google and Amazon also have offices. Austin is probably going to become very competitive on salaries as well. And as many have seen, home prices and COL have risen in these cities accordingly. So if you do want to work from home for one of the big tech companies be sure to live in a metro that has at least another big tech company in it.

This will be a boost for "tier 2" metros with tech companies that support this pattern. Salaries will be going up in those metros. Also if you can WFH for FB, you should be able to WFH for all the other major tech companies which will compete for you using salary and stock etc...

</comment><comment><USER71> Competing with the entire world instead of just your city now.

</comment><comment><USER72> This is basically another way of outsourcing. Looks good on paper as always. Whether it will really be cost effective - YMMV as many companies found in the past. While the salaries of rank and file ICs will go down, the salary of organizationally key people able to manage the outsourced work - PM/architect/manager - would go up. They would be flown in regularly for important meetings, paid high cost temporary housing while in the town, etc. We had that supposedly key architect on the team who was coming for 2 months every 2 months from abroad and the company was paying for the flying and everything while he was here.

</comment><comment><USER73> This mostly doesn't change much. Most people who come to high pay areas come for the pay and opportunity and will continue to do so. Sounds more like PR. It's yet to be seen if productivity is better or worse.

<comment><USER47> > It's yet to be seen if productivity is better or worse

The rest of the source announcement covered that. It was noted that individual productivity was the same or better, but there were concerns about collaboration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> I find people who have never actually worked remotely before are all jazzed going full time remote. People who have done it before, like myself, will tell them it's not for everyone and has some downsides. Once people realize they can't just go snowboarding in the middle of the day and need to actively find human interaction to avoid depression and isolation while getting paid less they will change their tune.

The ideal setup is 1-2 days per week WFH and flexible WFH while traveling for the holidays so you don't have burn through vacation days IMO.

</comment><comment><USER75> This would increase the talent pool for tech companies that goes remote. e.g. U.S. companies could hire more international developers without sponsoring work visa for them.

</comment><comment><USER76> I can't help but feel like there is going to be a glut of privacy invasive technologies coming down the pipeline real soon for managers to keep their jobs.

</comment><comment><USER77> As a Brit; I'm a capitalist with a sprinkle of socialism.

I'm disappointing none of these tech companies are acknowledging the happiness that comes from camaraderie and togetherness. (Note: I don't have a family though)

I love the company of others; and the unpredictability of what my day has in store when I venture out my front door.

Everybody working from home for me sounds like one step closer towards a blander, lonelier, disengaged, dispassionate, oppressed workforce.

<comment><USER78> You can still find places to work with other peoples, or spontaneously meet your colleagues in a much nicer (and possibly nearer) place. When the COVID crisis will go, you'll find tons of options to meet people thorough the day and enjoy a great social life. Working from home is a pandemic thing, afterwards you could work from anywhere you want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> "Facebook will reduce the pay of workers who move to less expensive areas."

That is ridiculous. A job is a job. Also what prevents anyone from keeping a California phone number and a PO Box in Menlo Park or wherever? At what point have you 'moved'?

Note: I don't advocate doing this. I neither work in CA nor at Facebook. I just wonder if this doesn't open things up for being to game the system.

<comment><USER80> "Hey ulfw, would you mind coming into the office tomorrow for X? Shouldn't be an issue since you're local..."

<comment><USER79> The idea is to not come into work as you're WFH permanently in this setup.

Listen I am not advocating doing this. I don't even live there nor do I work at Facebook. I just feel like this is easily gameable.

<comment><USER81> I doubt most people will take the risk of gaming their employer.

<comment> kube-system ...Or the IRS, on your W4.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> Our cities are going to be so sad after all of these changes. Knowledge workers are all going to be in the suburbs or working from home. Restaurants and bars will be shuttered en masse. Parks and shopping plazas will be empty. Trains and busses will be ignored in favor of cars.

This really does look like it could be the end of new urbanism and the revenge of the suburbs.

<comment><USER83> Counterpoint: as a late 20something software engineer, I'm taking the opportunity to work remotely as motivation to move to a (cheaper) city and live right in the heart of downtown. Now that I can choose where I work, I can move to a city I love that's a bit cheaper than my current location, own a house in an awesome neighborhood, and hopefully take much more advantage of what the city has to offer. As of now, I've done very little exploring in my current (very large) city because 1) I live on the outskirts to be able to afford my rent, 2) I had to drive almost an hour each way to get to work, and 3) I was so "busy" due to my commute that I was exhausted in the evenings and busy with keeping the house in order on the weekends.

Frankly, working remotely is giving me the opportunity to actually participate in the city culture I wanted so badly, but on a scale that's much easier to digest and enjoy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> Working from home doesn't work with Facebook's appraisal system, where you need to s __* up to your peers and managers all the time to get anywhere in your career. Most Facebook employees will eventually be back in the office, as it is difficult to build up such relations when remote working only.

</comment><comment><USER85> many things will change. Traffic, real estate prices, salaries.

</comment><comment><USER86> I don't really like working from home but I hate the Bay Area.

Same price as NYC but it's a boring sprawling suburb no different from Florida or Texas. Sure the mountains and weather are nice but I'm not paying rent to the trees.

</comment><comment><USER87> In my opinion, WFH vs on-site is analogous to reading a physical book vs an e-book. Some people will prefer one over the other. Considering the above analogy holds, most companies will allow both, remote work and on-site.

</comment><comment><USER88> Imagine all the cultural export that used to happen earlier from California. All that will ideally either stop or tech companies will somehow find a way to make it worse and bring cancel culture to remote workplaces.

</comment><comment><USER89> Zuckerberg live Q&A: [https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10111936118050541](https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10111936118050541)

</comment><comment><USER90> With all this remote work going on, does anyone know whether this will affect whether companies are willing to relocate people to the USA? Would be a real shame if that was to go.

</comment><comment><USER91> Also, zucc publicly stated intentions to adjust salary for anyone that moves out of the bay area. You can tell already it's gonna suck to work remotely at facebook.

</comment><comment><USER92> My productivity and quality of life are both much higher WFH. And I'm even more willing to work longer hours, for any gulag drivers who happen to be reading.

</comment><comment><USER93> Companies are realising the amount they save with infrastructure Costs. Even indian service companies TCS is going 75 percent workers fully remote.

</comment><comment><USER94> great move, from fb. given they've a global product. it democratizes opportunity. plenty of people suffer from the misfortune of having been born in the wrong country. I see the trend continuing. one thing, I see is immigrant friendly countries gonna benefit from this more e.g Canada, Chile. And places with high quality of life, low cost of living.

</comment><comment><USER95> Amazing how many people are so against remote work here.

Hey, here's a thought. Let people choose how and where they work best.

/thread.

</comment><comment><USER96> Ironic that a company so eager to do this still does not have any legitimate customer support staff.

</comment><comment><USER97> Where will all these Bay Area people move to if they leave? Sacramento, Tahoe, Los Angeles, Denver?

</comment><comment><USER98> Winner: Human talent, no matter where they live. Loser: Real Estate.

</comment><comment><USER99> Now all of our personal data can be accessed from home. Lovely.

</comment><comment><USER29> "Facebook will reduce the pay of workers who move to less expensive areas."

Personally, this is a deal breaker for me. I don't want to get paid less for doing the same amount of work. In a remote world, deciding where to live should be a personal decision of how one spends their income. Facebook doesn't pay employees less because they decided to drive an expensive car to work.

Facebook, along with all other tech companies, make crazy amounts of revenue per employee. The pay reductions will be a rounding error on the company's budget. Why not keep salaries the same and get the absolute best talent in every market across the world?

<comment><USER100> All (most?) big companies already set pay based on local market conditions. This is actually based on what pay levels are in the market, not cost of living.

<comment><USER101> Doesn't make it any easier to swallow. Your value as an employee is not coupled to your physical location.

<comment><USER64> Cost of living is higher if you live in a major metropolitan area. That higher SF salary gets you the same amount of goods and services as a lower salary in Utah. This is a pretty basic concept.

If you want to get paid the big salary, move to the big city. Don't complain about higher rent and cost of food. Or live frugally.

<comment><USER102> But there is value in living in those higher CoL areas (hence them being higher CoL) that you sacrifice living in a lower CoL area. You sacrifice on space to live in SF, but you get all the other benefits which is why people do it. If I sacrifice the SF benefits, why do I then also have to sacrifice my CoL/pay ratio without any additional gain?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER103> What if I live in San Fran, but just live in my car? That should save a lot of money.

<comment><USER104> I know a lot of people that do this (in their vans). Its not actually as crazy as it sounds - the van is comfortable and you can shower in a gym.

<comment><USER105> I know a couple of people who live out of their vans. I believe them when they say it's not actually that bad and they like it.

But at the end of the day, while I doubt they'd admit it, the main reason either of them do it is because they can't afford anything else, even though they have full-time jobs and work just as hard as the next guy.

Isn't this a sign of a broken housing market? What kind of world are we creating where significant numbers of people are forced out of economic necessity to live in vehicles?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER91> kicking and screaming</comment>


8 Signs Google is Planning to Build a National Wireless Network - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailywireless.com/features/8-signs-google-is-planning-to-build-a-wireless-network-031907/ <comment><USER2> With so many saying that google's stock is way overvalued, building a national wireless network or just a 'regular' ISP may be the best way to throw around the weight they have now to establish a truly permanent foothold.

Also, (this is a stretch, but) it's been argued that the youtube acquisition was in large part due to google's want to put their warchest behind keeping the DMCA's definition of 'common carrier status' as wide as possible. This is something they definitely need to protect as a search engine, but also certainly if they want to become any form of ISP, especially one with open wireless networks.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems rather speculative.

I don't think Google really wants to get into the national infrastructure business, but then again I suppose they are looking into free WiFi...

Of course, last I heard that free WiFi plan actually wasn't going very well due to some political issues.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Incidentally, _I_ don't think they are, unless forced to. I think they just like to have such plans in readiness to keep the backbone owners in line.

<comment><USER4> If every single person in the country had broadband access, regardless of economic status, there's no one that would benefit more than Google. The pay- access model of the current ISPs is in their way to greater market penetration. Add to that the (quite accurate) location data that wireless would give them.. the possibilities are endless.</comment></comment>


Why Techmeme should support the new - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/103716847685048716973/posts/Kj3PArwcVrM

<comment><USER2> Well, something has to fill that giant hole on Techmeme that I now notice. The mobile site <http://techmeme.com/m/> doesn't have room for the sidebar.</comment>


The Evil Diggbar - <AUTHOR> http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/The_Diggbar_Is_Evil__Here_s_How_to_Stop_it

<comment><USER2> Digg can avoid pissing people off with this by adding their own framebuster. If the frameset's HTTP referrer is Digg, then the DiggBar is a potentially useful toolbar. If the referrer is something else, it should redirect to the original page.

</comment><comment><USER3> Minor typo:

"Here's the problem: If your site ends up on Digg, visitors using the Diggbar will _not_ visit your URL"

The italicized " _not_ " is omitted in the actual article.

</comment><comment><USER4> What about the Facebookbar? Why is no one complaining?

<comment><USER5> Even reddit has one; it's just disabled in the user's settings by default.

<comment><USER3> Defaults matter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ironically he isn't blocking the diggbar.</comment>