Twitter Will Allow Employees To Work At Home Forever (buzzfeednews.com) 86
Some Twitter employees will never return to their office. From a report: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey emailed employees on Tuesday telling them that they'd be allowed to work from home permanently, even after the coronavirus pandemic lockdown passes. Some jobs that require physical presence, such as maintaining servers, will still require employees to come in. "We've been very thoughtful in how we've approached this from the time we were one of the first companies to move to a work-from-home model," a Twitter spokesperson told BuzzFeed News. "We'll continue to be, and we'll continue to put the safety of our people and communities first."
Twitter encouraged its employees to start working from home in early March as the coronavirus began to spread across the US. Several other tech companies did the same, including Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. That month, Twitter human resources head Jennifer Christie told BuzzFeed News the company would "never probably be the same" in the structure of its work. "People who were reticent to work remotely will find that they really thrive that way," Christie said. "Managers who didn't think they could manage teams that were remote will have a different perspective. I do think we won't go back."
Twitter encouraged its employees to start working from home in early March as the coronavirus began to spread across the US. Several other tech companies did the same, including Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. That month, Twitter human resources head Jennifer Christie told BuzzFeed News the company would "never probably be the same" in the structure of its work. "People who were reticent to work remotely will find that they really thrive that way," Christie said. "Managers who didn't think they could manage teams that were remote will have a different perspective. I do think we won't go back."
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Who the fuck is Marissa Meyer?
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An author, apparently. I think OP wanted to reference the CEO who killed Yahoo, Marissa Mayer.
Re:B-b-b-but Marissa Meyer (Score:5, Insightful)
the CEO who killed Yahoo, Marissa Mayer.
If a patient has terminal cancer, gets a new doctor, and then dies anyway, we would not say that the new doctor "killed" the patient.
Re:B-b-b-but Marissa Meyer (Score:4, Insightful)
We wouldn't rule out that dr. Kevorkian might have done something stupid either just BECAUSE the patient was terminally ill.
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True, but I wouldn't give the doctor $239 million for his efforts.
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Oh, so you're not in America. /s but not completely /s.
Re:It's called being layed off (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's called saving on office space rent, saving on hardware purchases/lease, saving on electric/telecom bills and so on.
If people work from home, it offers massive savings to the company. Even if company has to provide the computer, and pay for the telecom bill, it's still saving on office space and some of the fixed costs.
Re: It's called being layed off (Score:2)
Re: It's called being layed off (Score:1)
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people working from home can be replaced by people working halfway around the world at a quarter the cost.
Twitter could save half their payroll costs just by hiring people 60 miles away in Tracy or Stockton.
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They could move the office there too. But they wanted the most expensive office real estate in the entire state. San Francisco isn't really a big tech hub anyway, but then Twitter isn't really a tech company.
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Sure. But is a design studio "tech"? If it is, then "tech" has lost any important meaning.
Re: It's called being layed off (Score:2)
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So what is "tech" and what is not "tech"? The ability to use an app? Sticking servers in the back office and configuring them? Having VC investors? The line here to me seems extremely fuzzy.
Why is Tesla a tech company and Toyota is merely an auto maker, even though both make electric vehicles and invent their own technology. What is the dividing line here?
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But is a design studio "tech"?
Yes, they are tech.
SF design shops are not just ignorant pixelpushers passing images off to the web monkeys.
They understand backend issues and how to design fast-loading sites.
They wouldn't be making six-figure salaries if the only tool they understood was Photoshop.
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people working from home can be replaced by people working halfway around the world at a quarter the cost.
Twitter could save half their payroll costs just by hiring people 60 miles away in Tracy or Stockton.
The move towards remote work will allow them to do so. This is simply impossible if a tech company tries to keep a brick-n-mortar office. Reference: Enrico Moretti's "The New Geography of Jobs."
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Yeah there are quality engineers working far from tech hubs in the US. They're sparse but probably more numerous than SV, Austin, and Seattle combined.
Re: It's called being layed off (Score:5, Interesting)
This is old news. We have been trying to outsource technology services around the world for about 20 years already.
These are the findings.
1. There are a lot of hidden costs that makes it more expensive then one realizes.
Including having to hire more offshore workers to get the job done. This isn't saying that American Workers are that much better than an Indian Developer. But they need to bring on managers, who are local to the area to work their hours, and understands the culture for better management. Having people dealing with the currency conversions, any Tariffs and fees....
2. Time Difference is a big issue. You want to work with team members then you have only a slim period of time where both of your orgs are open.
3. Culture Issues. This is a problem even with working with people from different parts of America. If I tell you to start work at 8:00 AM if you come in at 8:05 is that a big deal. How about 8:30 or Before 9:00. How about starting at some point in the AM. Is a 1 hour lunch break good, or will it take 3 hours and you will work until 7PM? Also some cultures will not ask questions and just do what the Boss says without thinking. (This was a mistake that I did, I asked the India Development to create a function that opened up some random file, and performed particular translations to it. By random file I meant have that as a parameter where I will later provide the file name, he interpreted it as actually getting a list of all the files on the filesystem(s) (which made his question about including network files more apparent) then randomly opening up a file on the computer. Which I gave him a week to do the work, so I checked in after a week, I see that he was doing all sorts of crazy system calls to get all the files. And 0 work on the translation that needed to be done.)
4. Language. There are number of dialects of English even talking England English, vs Scottish English, vs. American English vs. Australian English. Has there oddities that just make things tough.
In general if you want workers from half way around the world. You better spend the money to ship them to work in America and inside American culture for about 6 months before letting them loose in their own country. Just so they know how to do things our way.
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So... Basecamp employees have worked remotely for years now, with people all over the US and in Europe. It can be done. It has been done.
While it may not be offshoring, I think that more and more many job applicants will be competing with applicants from all over the US and not just those that live in your immediate area. This allows companies to hire the best people they can find, and again, not just those that live nearby the corporate office.
Further, they could find a hotshot software engineer in, say, W
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Except that you have to hire 5 of them to be just as productive. Sure, there are some smart people in India, but many of the smart ones are already in US and Europe. So when the outsourcing agency says that they have 100 people ready and qualified to work on your project before you've even presented the details of the project, you know you're really only going to get about 10 who really matter. And they're going to try to give you the under-performers first who no one else wants on their project, at leas
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Those who could be replaced by twitter have already been replaced years ago. Staff currently in US is there because it has to be there. Reasons range from economic to cultural.
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And saving when you realize that people working from home can be replaced by people working halfway around the world at a quarter the cost.
That's not how it works champ. You are still thinking we are in the 2000's when offshoring was all the rage. And TBH, it never truly applied to R&D, just on grunt IT work.
If they could do the job, they'd already be hired (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can do it from home, why can't Pajeet and Ramesh do it from India?
If "Pajeet" and "Ramesh" could do the job, they'd already be hired, if not by Twitter, by someone else...and they'd most likely had their H1B sponsored.
Sorry, there's not huge pools of untapped talent around the globe.
I've worked for many companies that tried to find cheap gems in India. They have the same shortage everyone else does. The candidates are garbage. The least shitty quickly leave for much better pay. The talented engineers have already relocated to somewhere with a better standard of living or are living in the major cities employed by major tech companies already. You don't get bargains, just complexity and hassle.
Nothing is more expensive than a cheap engineer.
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Re: If they could do the job, they'd already be hi (Score:3)
You just gotta know where to shop. India is old news. Eastern Europe is still alright. Latin America is the new hotness. Argentina and Costa Rica are both good places to look. Big plus is the timezone is close, especially if you're on the East coast.
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However, there may still need to be space available. When the employee is told "you may work for home as long as you want" it is not the same as "please work from home as your primary work location." With the former, the worker can still come into the office and have a place to sit. Maybe it's a hotel cube that's shared amongst three or four people, or maybe it's their own cube that's only used once a week or less, something like that. Once you start having hotel cubes then you need to ensure that too m
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And that's fine. Every time we had a major new paradigm in work space, some proportion of people are left behind.
Last time that happened, that was the integration of fast internet into workplace. That left behind technologically illiterate who refused to learn. What current epidemic is showing us is that a lot of jobs don't actually need physical presence to be done. Like integration of internet, this offers companies a lot of savings.
So it's very likely that people like you will have to go the same way tha
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Last time that happened, that was the integration of fast internet into workplace. That left behind technologically illiterate who refused to learn.
Where I worked at the time it seems that all the "technologically illiterate who refused to learn" became managers. Part of the reason I no longer work there, and neither does anyone else.
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A manager that can't message his bosses to make relevant reports is going to have a one short career. Your statement tells us nothing about your former work place, and a a lot about you.
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I used to work for a fortune 50 that estimated by having a large work from home workforce they saved upwards of a billion per year in office space facilities costs annually.
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This only happens if the company moves to smaller offices which probably means breaking their current lease.
Considering they moved into a building which had been vacant for 50 years [businessinsider.com] in one of the depressed areas of San Francisco, I don't see them saving much money unless they start getting other clients to fill the vacant space when their employees work from home.
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You vastly underestimate the amount of employees Twitter has as well as costs associated with providing working spaces for said employees.
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No, it's called saving on office space rent, saving on hardware purchases/lease, saving on electric/telecom bills and so on.
If people work from home, it offers massive savings to the company. Even if company has to provide the computer, and pay for the telecom bill, it's still saving on office space and some of the fixed costs.
No, it's called pushing your facility costs onto your employees as they need to find space (and furnish it as such) in their current home or more likely rent out a large home, need to pay for the increased electricity, water, plumbing, etc. costs, possibly need to pay for higher quality Internet -- or at least some service-level guarantees (hard to WFH when your internet is down).
And somehow, I really doubt the company is going to provide enough of a raise (if at all) to offset those additional costs.
New enabling capital infusion? (Score:1)
Twitter Will Allow Employees To Work At Home Forever
Wow. Didn't think a corporation was capable of doing that.
Re: New enabling capital infusion? (Score:3)
Indeed this immortality for employees and their homes is huge news. :)
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Indeed this immortality for employees and their homes is huge news. :)
Surely anybody sentenced to deal with the inhabitants of the twitterverse for all eternity is not at home, they are in hell.
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Well, as long as 50.8% are eligible for upgrading after reconsideration.
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They've come a long way from 140 characters maximum!
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In order to become immortal, the employees have to script up a collection of bots to continue their online twitter work after their biological demise.
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Given your username, and my disappointment with myself if my post doesn't have at least 3 levels of meaning to them, we'll go with this. [youtube.com]
I only do 2D chess, but I can generally manage 5D checkers.
Forever == until they change their mind (Score:2)
Or they will define forever the way carriers define 'unlimited'.
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I think it's forever until they change their mind. I don't see any reason why it could not work, and I don't see any reason why this will change in the next year or two. But some celebrity "manager" writes a book, says working from work is the key to success...and boom, come to work or be fired. And good luck to you if you relocated to a cheap state with lots of land and nature, the commute will suck.
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I think it slowly erodes after vaccination levels hit about 60% and new cases stop occurring. The hot new trend will become in-office working. Managers will "rediscover" the benefits of working in a shared space.
Like teleworking used to be, it will start out sort of exclusive, and be kind of a management indulgence -- catered meals, lounging at a semi-distance on soft seating and without the former distractions of a "full" office.
But eventually the forgotten benefits will be revived, and we'll have some n
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someone will reboot the open office concept again.
Hopefully we identify him soon, quarantine him. Do contact tracing to identify anyone he has ever come in contact with. Send them all in an open office spaceship to Betelgeuse and celebrate.
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Quite possibly. It's not like everyone else does it differently...
That said, Twitter will save some money, what with not needing to maintain office space, and being able to pay people less (I expect new employees living in cheaper places will be delighted, people living in expensive places not so much) while still having a pretty attractive pay-package (if I were being paid a "low" wage by SanFran/SillyValley/wherever-Twitter-is-now, I'd be m
Cost Savings (Score:3)
Should save Twitter a lot of money on rent; electricity; equipment; maintenance/cleaning crew; all the free breakfast, lunches and snacks; and other stuff.
Re:Cost Savings (Score:5, Interesting)
Not to mention making it easier to hire good people because they don't have to be physically near the rest of the team now.
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Timezones are still a problem. 1 or 2 hours is manageable, 8 hours not so much.
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Depends. I'm sure there's a lot of people in India who wouldn't mind working a graveyard shift if it meant bringing in something close to American wages.
And salaries, too (Score:1)
Once Twitter embraces WFH, they will inevitably discover that they don't need to pay $300-500K per year per engineer if that engineer is not in Bay Area.
I called this! (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know if I posted it here, but certainly this sort of thing has been a topic of discussion with friends and family members as we started to come to terms with all these overbearing changes.
Specifically that I knew many companies had a culture that simply requires all employees to be on site 9-5. But this could be a great business decision. Restructuring like this may well allow companies to trim down, no need to have offices with hundreds of cubicles, just need a place for the servers and a couple conference rooms. Not to mention the added expectation of higher productivity since employees won't be commuting as much, and if they are at home all the time, they are at work all the time!
I think that is the part we need to keep tabs on. Home/work life balance. That and corporate spyware allowing managers to have an unprecedented amount of information about workers. You know, making overbearing decisions over things like metrics of % of time user was active at the terminal. A thing that might make sense for somebody like a data-entry clerk, but probably all too appealing for any worker that sits at a desk, like a software developer. My company has this sort of software installed on my laptop, but I think it's mostly used to determine if my machine might be compromised in some way, and to make sure I'm not using unauthorized software or doing something I shouldn't, like leaking files to a USB key or that type of thing.
I also wonder what this might mean for things like my kids' education. They are still doing class, but they do so the same way I work from home. If this proves successful in any sort of way, I wouldn't be surprised to see big changes there either.
Not sure if I've formed a full opinion on what I think about things like this, I guess it could go either way.
I'm not used to this (Score:4, Funny)
Outbreaks of Common Sense, I mean. Wish it wasn't so unusual...
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The best part is, since it's posted anonymously, he must be periodically checking to see if he got the applause.
The next step is working from home in Inida (Score:2, Insightful)
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Companies don't hire me because of where I can do my job, companies hire me because I'm sufficiently talented and don't come from a country where the highest ranked University is about number 368 in the global rankings despite having about 20% of the world's population - yes I'm looking at you India.
My job isn't remotely at risk of outsourcing because I'm actually competent. Even if you paid for 100 Indian developers from InfoSys or WiPro they'd be incapable of producing the kind of software I can because n
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Good for you, but this is not true for 95% of all coding jobs. In that case you can easily replace a good developer with two shit developers and call it doen.
Very Promising (Score:2)
Wait, they couldn't already? (Score:3)
Huh. Every company I've worked for in the last 15 years (in Silicon Valley) was so desperate for talent they already pretty much had this policy. Generally the remote people show up every month or six for face to face meetings and a lunch they didn't make themselves. Most remember to wear pants.
Given that just our division has something like nine sites (California x 2, North Carolina, New England, Fly-over states x 2, China, India x 2), your chances of the person you're looking for actually being at your site was getting vanishingly small.
That being said, I don't expect this to be the last company to realize having everyone in the office ain't all it's cracked up to be. I get two extra hours at the cost of no excuses for not making that 7 AM meeting.
Why did it take a pandemic? (Score:3)
Why did it take a pandemic for Corporate America to figure out what their employees have been telling them for the past two decades?
I will never forget how the prejudice of Corporate America made it nearly impossible for the common person to afford a home, because they insisted on physical presence - with its corresponding increase in demand, and therefore price, of local real estate - even for jobs which could be done remotely.
So, the whole country bought expensive homes, mortgaged over the majority of our adult lives, only to then be told we were too expensive! Well, except for the physical presence prejudices, our labor would cost much less. Why should we bear the brunt of our employer's stupid prejudices?
Oh yay. (Score:1)
So some basement dweller bitches about a post.
And someone gets banned by ANOTHER basement dweller.
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It's just like the Matrix.
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If Hugo Weaving shows up at my place and fuses my mouth shut, I'm gonna be pissed....
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Infrastructure savings.
Abuse (Score:1)
It'll get abused. I remember a story a few years ago where a guy was holding down multiple Federal jobs and outsourced the actual work to people in India. They found him. Fired him.
So all it'll take is some a-hole to do this and the program will be cancelled. All it'll take is one guy and there's always one guy that thinks he's smarter than everyone else.