Gen Z Is Getting Screwed By Remote Work, Microsoft Survey Finds (cnet.com) 110
"A new study from Microsoft, released Monday, found that among the more than 31,000 workers it surveyed, 73% hoped remote work options would continue when the pandemic ends," reports CNET. "Even Gen Z applicants were slightly more likely to apply for a job with remote options than for one strictly in an office," even though they feel that they're losing out on the career growth that happens in the office. CNET reports: Gen Z workers, born roughly between the mid-1990s and mid-2010s, responded to Microsoft's surveys generally by saying they're more stressed and find they're struggling more than their peers. They tend to be single, since they're younger, leading them to feel isolated. And since they're early in their careers, they don't have financial means to create a good workspace at home if their employer won't pay for it. And they're not having those in-person meetings that sometimes help them land in career advancing projects, or even to get in good with the boss.
"Without hallway conversations, chance encounters, and small talk over coffee, it's hard to feel connected even to my immediate team, much less build meaningful connections across the company," wrote Hannah McConnaughey, a product marketing manager at Microsoft who's a Gen Z worker. "Networking as someone early in their career has gotten so much more daunting since the move to fully remote work -- especially since switching to a totally different team during the pandemic!"
Employees also say they want flexibility rather than fully remote jobs. Of the workers Microsoft surveyed, 73% said they want remote work options to stay, with 46% saying they plan to move now that they can work remotely. Still, 67% said they want more in-person work or collaboration too. In short: We don't seem to know what we want yet. [...] In its conclusions, Microsoft suggests companies invest in technology that helps bridge the physical and digital worlds, so teams can work remotely and in the office. Additionally, it says Gen Z employees need more career support.
"Without hallway conversations, chance encounters, and small talk over coffee, it's hard to feel connected even to my immediate team, much less build meaningful connections across the company," wrote Hannah McConnaughey, a product marketing manager at Microsoft who's a Gen Z worker. "Networking as someone early in their career has gotten so much more daunting since the move to fully remote work -- especially since switching to a totally different team during the pandemic!"
Employees also say they want flexibility rather than fully remote jobs. Of the workers Microsoft surveyed, 73% said they want remote work options to stay, with 46% saying they plan to move now that they can work remotely. Still, 67% said they want more in-person work or collaboration too. In short: We don't seem to know what we want yet. [...] In its conclusions, Microsoft suggests companies invest in technology that helps bridge the physical and digital worlds, so teams can work remotely and in the office. Additionally, it says Gen Z employees need more career support.
Takes away sex advancement options (Score:3, Funny)
What industry are you in? (Score:3)
Many of my co-workers slept their way "up the ladder", one has to believe this will become much more difficult if everyone is remote.
It must be a shit job if you can get by with that. Maybe a short-term gig like a waitress or the entertainment industry, but for any job that would allow remote work, I can't imagine a good one tolerating sex between workers and subordinates. I have had dozens of jobs and the 1 case where we suspected someone had an interoffice romance, the more senior person was fired shorty afterwards (not sure if it was for sexual reasons or whatever slimy other shit he was engaged in).
Good jobs, particularly those
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Re: What industry are you in? (Score:3, Insightful)
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I've worked with guys who slept their way up the ladder
As have I. My bad for assuming genders.
Your assumption that anyone complaining about it is a guy says a lot about you
It says that I understand the statistics, considering the typical audience of Slashdot. Again, my bad for assuming genders.
and not just in regards to your general naivety
Again, what's statistically more likely? That this random Internet coward knows "many" people that have slept their way up the ladder. Or that they are full of shit? What do you think the ratio is for people that have actually slept with their boss to get a promotion vs the number of people who are pissed because someone got a promotion instead
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Quit apologizing for this, please.
It is NOT necessary.
Re: What industry are you in? (Score:2)
Why is it unnecessary?
Re: What industry are you in? (Score:2)
Re: What industry are you in? (Score:1)
My ex-wife slept her way up. Ending up sleeping with and then getting dumped by the VP in her company. Then again, she also slept with my ex-best friend, and several other acquaintances in my immediate circle to get what she wanted. Itâ(TM)s totally do-able. Not that it got her anywhere. She now lives with her parents, and I bought a new home on a lake fully paid for last year.
She also started doing that in less than a year of our marriage. She told me she was divorcing and leaving me while I was in th
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Sounds like your ex-wife and mine are playing from the same book, with the similar results. Except mine is guest of the state. Well now you know why divorces are so expensive. They are worth it.
Re:Takes away sex advancement options (Score:5, Funny)
Many of my co-workers slept their way "up the ladder"
So, lots of meetings?
You should stop doing that (Score:5, Funny)
If you think that "many" of your co-workers slept your their way up the ladder, not one but many, one of a few things is happening:
A. You've been telling your subordinates that sleeping with you will be good for their career.
B. Rather than facing your own shortcomings and dealing with them, you've been rationalizing that all of the people doing better than you must be cheating.
C. You've been working in the porn industry.
If A, you should stop that.
If B, you should stop that.
If C, that's a fun industry, isn't it.
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I have seen occasions where these accusations are made and yet it feels strongly like the accusations are sour grapes rather than any actual substance behind them. I have seen affairs in the office but it was rare that this involved promotions or the like. If there is enough evidence for a casual onlooker to know that a promotion was due to sex then it would seem likely that lots of people would know this and HR would put their foot down very hard. HR almost always takes these things seriously these days
Re:You should stop doing that (Score:4, Interesting)
Jobs promoted by "sleeping with the boss" vs merit are pretty easy to identify.
- Person promoted has no seniority/experience in the job being promoted into (which is typical of team lead, supervisory and management positions)
- Once promoted, the person seems to shun personal responsibility and drop their own duties onto their subordinates. They try to appear competent but someone else who is being paid less is actually doing the work, and thus if they get promoted again, they want to keep that "helping" staff.
- People generally hate the person promoted for petty reasons not relevant to their competence.
Like just to speak from experience, I had a "boss" create a position "for me" that everyone had to apply for, but they were only intending to hire me to it, because I wasn't interested in it, and then was told to apply for it, so I did, and got it. This job by the way, everyone was eventually outsourced to India after a few months. I didn't need to sleep with anyone to get it.
Sometimes it's not "merit", it's simply the boss playing favorites because the boss likes someone and wants to keep them (see second point) for some reason that isn't immediately obvious.
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Hmm. It worked for Kamala Harris [snopes.com].
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While rated "funny" this is also sexist. Also likely true for many office/management positions in any size company.
Like it's not too much to connect the dots when people are not promoted on merit.
Anyhow, that's not the answer Microsoft was looking for, nor will publish. Realistically nobody physically wants to "go to work", otherwise we wouldn't have all these idiot-level jobs that can be outsourced in the first place. If you can outsource it, then it wasn't core to the job and you should hire someone else
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"a study from microsoft"
"a study f
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Why do you think OnlyFans has become more popular?
Mistitled Headline (Score:5, Insightful)
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The title makes is sound like this is something intentionally aimed at younger workers, when in reality it's hard to form connections in a new company or team when working remotely, regardless of age.
Good. Maybe salary increases and promotions will no longer be strongly biased by irrelevant factors such as how well liked is someone by the boss, in the office.
Maybe (wet dream, I know) knowledge, efficiency and skills are going to weigh more than socializing skills, especially in areas where they are not as important for someone to do their job well.
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Having been involved in a few years of having to deal with salary increases and promotions, I have never seen it be based on irrelevant factors. Maybe the worker thinks this way, but usually it's very clear going in that (1) you know who the top performers are and who's dead weight, and (2) managers really don't have as much control over all of this as it seems from the outside. At least not in any company over 100 people I would think. Social skills don't count into it, except for the part where you you
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Your comment and the above, I guess just shows how many factors there are in work culture. I think you're both right about what you've seen from experience. In an odd way, this proves the article, because in order to understand your local work culture, i.e. what kinds of decisions are the people in charge making, and what are they basing those decisions on, e.g. that person caught a problem early and reported it, vs. that person caught a problem early and their manager didn't want to deal with it -- all the
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And salary in most companies, 95% of it will be based upon your starting salary, for salaried workers. After that point you get regular raises within a tiny window. Maybe that range is 1% to 5%, hypothetically. Which means the low paid guy will never catch up to the high paid guy even if 5 times more productive.
You just proved salary increases and promotions are based on irrelevant factors.
Because it's not relevant how large the base salary is. The person making $40K a year but producing $1M worth gets 5% increase ($2K per year), while the person making $100K a year but producing $200K worth gets 5% too ($10K).
There you go, decisions based on something other than productivity.
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It also simply states that those people, i.e. people with zero real world office experience simply believe it will impact them negatively. This doesn't mean it actually will, and it's telling that those with actual office experience disagree.
This is just naivety on behalf of the segment of the population that have no experience building relationships remotely - something everyone who has worked in a business with multiple offices spread across the globe, or dealt with remote clients or suppliers has had to
Gen Z means Millennials (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Gen Z means Millennials (Score:5, Informative)
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Everyone always seems to forget that Millennials were Gen Y until some news organizations decided to make the term "Millennials" a thing. Gen Z is looking like it will be "Zoomers" for the same reason. (I think Gen Y got the better deal here, honestly.)
Re:Gen Z means Millennials (Score:5, Funny)
We GenXers are so lame we didn't even get a name.
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Because so few words start with X. Do you really want to be the Xylophoners?
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Um... Millenial doesn't start with Y. Gen X came after Boomer. There's literally NOTHING about any of this that says the gens are an alphabetic sequence once a name sticks. GenX. Got. Skipped.
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Don't you want to be Xenomorphs?
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Millennials are 22
That's not right, either.
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Millennials are sending their kids to uni now. Gen Z is just entering the workforce.
Also your best friend sounds like a knob who is bragging about being an incompetent parent to me. And every generation thinks they invented music, sex and remote access to computational resources.
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Everything I read about generational labels is the reverse of that. My kids are considered millennials, and my youngest is graduating Dental school this year, and she's going to be older than most of those in her graduating class. Though, if you were born at the end of the "millennial" cohort, early 1990s to late 1990s depending on who's doing the labeling, I guess you could still be in college.
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Literally every generation thinks the previous ones are doing it wrong, and they can do it better. Every generation the world becomes a bit better of a place, so... They aren't wrong?
Re: Gen Z means Millennials (Score:2)
Technology is what makes the world a better place, not generations.
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"EVERY generation thinks that their ideas are better "
GenX did not think their ideas were better. We just figured everything was becoming terrible.
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My generation famously shrugged its shoulders and tried its best to ignore the 'Me Generation'
We started trying to change things. Then we figured out there's like 12 of us, so the Boomers didn't give a shit what we wanted.
Generation age range shenanigans (Score:5, Interesting)
In the last few years, I've seen a concerted effort to shrink the size of Gen X and Millennials and push the date for Zoomers back substantially. It used to be 65->81/82 for Gen X, 82-83->2000 for Millennials and 2001->a few years ago for Zoomers. Now Gen X is being compressed to 15 years and some of the date ranges put Millennials as small as a 13 year window.
Yet the Boomer window is absolutely unchanged: 1946->1964. Never budges in either direction. Makes me suspect that this is being done partly to further chop up younger generations, divide them and make it harder for them to organize along age class lines and push back on things like the raping of our country's finances to keep stocks and real estate high while also overgenerously funding SS and Medicare**
**It's a myth that deep cuts in the military and IC budget would do much here. We already spend as much every year on Medicare as we do on the military, and Medicare is growing at a 9% rate. If we had a balanced budget amendment, there would be barely $500B left over to fund the entire federal government from education, to the military, to prisons, to highways, to border security.
Medicare isn't the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Good luck with that though. It would do away with the private insurance industry, who are probably responsible for the talking point you've got there. After all, if you can kill Medicare imagine all those new over 65 customers who have to buy more heath insurance...
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How do you think Medicare reimbursement rates are set currently, such that some magic "negotiation" will significantly reduce prices?
Mostly, the reimbursement rates are set -- by the government, unilaterally -- to be between the average and marginal costs of an additional patient, meaning that private payers end up subsidizing the portion of overhead costs that would otherwise be allocate to Medicare patients.
After a lot of lobbying (Score:1)
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I see you are as bad as ever at answering direct questions.
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It's defined by culture, not time. A person growing up today would not even have the same TV shows and attitudes presented to them. In the 80s there wasn't a lot of choice in entertainment. No YouTubers and TikTok stars, basically people watched a lot of the same shows. The other thing is you had to go to the library or buy a book to look things up. The concept of being unreachable and having a cell phone on you at all times is unheard of to a Gen Z person. Lots of major differences culturally too. For exam
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Re:Generation age range shenanigans (Score:5)
The baby boom is visible on demographic charts of births. It's not based on years, but upon an actual increase in birth rate during those years.
Productivity (Score:1)
I've heard from managers and executives that it's easier to fire remote workers. It's easy to swap in a cheaper worker. Workers of course love working at home so they don't see the danger.
The only solution I see is to accelerate the transition to universal basic income where the government (taxes) pay for an individual to be assigned a robot doing the work for them and they get the robot's salary. Basically, your income will be dependent on the productivity of the robot you were assigned or purchased. Of co
If they can get a cheaper remote worker they will (Score:3)
Think of it this way, companies get stuck offering jobs in NYC, San Francisco because that where the talent is. But the cost of living is insane, this means they have to pay their employees more or their employees become homeless and non-functional. This in turn gets them looki
Something doesn't add up (Score:3)
f the workers Microsoft surveyed, 73% said they want remote work options to stay, with 46% saying they plan to move now that they can work remotely. Still, 67% said they want more in-person work or collaboration too.
Maybe by move they mean still be in the general area, but far enough where coming in to the office everyday would be inconvenient, but at least some of that 46% that want to move have to realize that more in-person collaboration is far more difficult as a result.
Maybe those are just the people from the UX groups at Microsoft that just try to cram in every possible idea at once without realizing that some options require tradeoffs that that it's not possible to have everything you want all at once.
I have always wanted work from anywhere anytime (Score:1)
Core hours is for automatons.
They are not wrong (Score:3)
If that's you: "This too shall pass."
Gen Z workers (Score:5, Funny)
Merit Will Stand Out? (Score:2)
The optimist in me says, "Maybe merit will stand out over looks or style." The pessimist in me echos others, "That job can now be done in India, Brazil etc."
Maybe we should have some sliding tax scale for companies with legal incorporation or headquarters in one country, but most of their workforce elsewhere.
e.g. Incorporated in New Jersey, USA but headquartered in Atlanta, GA, USA and 60% of your workforce is located outside the US, you pay higher taxes than a company incorporated in Texas, HQ in Austin,
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If a guy in San Francisco wants $100k for a job someone in Kansas will do for $50k... Well then, I guess we hire the guy in Bangalore for $25k!
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Gen Z is getting screwed by pay (Score:5, Insightful)
In the 70s pay stopped keeping up with productivity increases. That meant more money at the top and less circulating in the economy proper. More productivity meant less jobs. The
Point is, instead of pining your hopes on your boss remembering your name because you said "Hi" in the elevator Gen Z (and every other Gen that isn't retired rich) should be looking at how much less money they're making and why.
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Real Inflation, not that fake "basket of goods" that somehow doesn't include housing, healthcare, education or even used cars.
You keep repeating this lie, over and over, even though you've been corrected on multiple occasions.
You don't appear to have provided this 'correction' here though. It might cause one to question whether it even exists.
Sure, we can pick certain demographics for whom wage rises have exceeded inflation - senior management / director positions haven't done too badly over the past couple of decades - but in reality these are a very small proportion of wage earners. A far greater proportion is made up of minimum wage employees, so it would seem reasonable to ask how has that (minimum wage) kept pace with infla
I'm in the pocket of Big Poor (Score:2)
Jokes aside what the AC is doing is a common right wing tactic for winning a debate, trying to shift the conversation and play offensive. A YouTuber by the name of "Innuendo Studios" has several videos on it. Try his "Card Says Moops" video. That along with his entire series on right wing tactics really are eye openers.
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Or, AC is pointing out the fact that the basket of goods used to measure inflation actually includes all the components you say it doesn't include.
For instance, you claim housing costs aren't represented in "the basket of goods", when in fact housing costs are the highest weighted component in the CPI at ~42%. [insider.com]
Of course, anyone who disagrees with you is automatically labelled as part of a "political other", a divisive, weak-minded tactic designed to shut down rational debate. I'm sure there a YouTube vid
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You don't appear to have provided this 'correction' here though.
...
In other words GP is correct, and your cowardly and misleading attempts to slander him and deny the truth of his statement don't appear to hold up in light of actual facts.
I'm not sure what you're reading, but what I see is rsilvergun claiming that "inflation" doesn't include housing, healthcare, education or used car prices.
Whenever you see "inflation" or "basket of goods" talked about in the US, 99.9% of the time what's being referred to is the CPI. The CPI uses a basket of goods to determine price changes from period to period, and it most definitely includes [bls.gov] the prices of every single one of the things in rsilvergun's list.
There are some measures of inflation that excl
See here (Score:2)
The relevant point:
Yes, it's a little more complex than I make it out to be, but it's more or less the same thing. The basket is faked. A handful of well to do boomers fit the bask
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Yes, it's a little more complex than I make it out to be, but it's more or less the same thing.
Uh huh. Here is what you said:
Real Inflation, not that fake "basket of goods" that somehow doesn't include housing, healthcare, education or even used cars.
Your own source refutes your claim, as frequently occurs when you post a "citation" supporting some hyperbolic statement you've made.
Now, if you had said something like "the CPI doesn't accurately reflect the true cost of living for certain segments of the population, particularly the young", we wouldn't be having this discussion.
But you didn't say anything like that. You said inflation doesn't include the price categories you listed. That is nowhere near "more or less th
Who's paying you to spout this nonsense? (Score:2)
My source said exactly what I've been saying, which is that heathcare, used cars and education are so far above what that "basket of goods" measures in inflation as to make the inflation stats we use pointless. They are therefore excluded. It's n
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I mean, if you're going to parrot a billionaire's talking points you should at least get paid? Oh my God, you do this for *free*? I mean, I'm trying to improve my living conditions, you're trying to make yours *worse* and you're doing it for free? Sad, just sad.
Hate to break it to you, but nothing I say on this site will change my living conditions or financial position one little bit. It's a testament to your irrational lunacy that you could actually believe otherwise.
You live in a world of your own delusions, and you are clearly dissatisfied. Despite admitting to making grave mistakes that have negatively impacted your life, your made up reality says you're a victim, and the target of your blame game is inevitably "billionaires" and/or people who don't share
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A fair comment.
I don't live in the US, so I can't really comment on how historical earnings calculations are reported; over in the UK two 'common' measures are used, the RPI and the CPI, and there's a roughly 1% reported difference between them. That's the sort of difference that can add up over 20+ years.
I am also aware of several factors, mostly unintentional 'lending weights' for banks, that have led to what is practically a housing bubble in the UK - or, if not a bubble exactly, a divergence in house pr
Dang child labor laws! (Score:3)
Gen Z workers, born roughly between the mid-1990s and mid-2010s, responded to Microsoft's surveys generally by saying they're more stressed and find they're struggling more than their peers.
I don't care if they were born in 2015 and are only five, they should be able to work in coal mines! What's the worse that could happen? ;)
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Came here to riff on this. You beat me to it.
wonder if it is valid (Score:2)
how can it be a valid survey when they are surveying 6 years olds
quoting the article
Gen Z workers, born roughly between the mid-1990s and mid-2010s, responded to Microsoft's surveys generally by saying they're more stressed and find they're struggling more than their peers. They tend to be single, since they're younger, leading them to feel isolated. And since they're early in their careers, they don't have financial means to create a good workspace at home if their employer won't pay for it. And they're no
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Those 6 year olds can be star performers at many start ups! If your kid isn't already forming their own entrepreneurial venture by age 6 then you're a lousy parent!
Wrong conclusion (Score:3)
73% said they want remote work options to stay, with 46% saying they plan to move now that they can work remotely. Still, 67% said they want more in-person work or collaboration too. In short: We don't seem to know what we want yet.
They do know what they want...they want to have their cake and eat it too.
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73% said they want remote work options to stay, with 46% saying they plan to move now that they can work remotely. Still, 67% said they want more in-person work or collaboration too. In short: We don't seem to know what we want yet.
They do know what they want...they want to have their cake and eat it too.
That's not how I read it. It sounds to me like they want remote working, but they also want to attend the office for some meetings/collaboration as required. Flexible working.
I can't speak for every job, but especially in professional settings, there is a clear delineation between the times you have to collaborate (meetings) and when you just need to sit in front of your desk and get stuff done. This might be writing actual code, or a report, or getting those accounting figures prepared. Depending on your r
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Well, there's probably a happy medium in there somewhere.
For example, a company I worked for did quarterly sync meetings and would bring everybody in. So, once a quarter, I got on an airplane and flew across the country and spent 4 days with my co-workers figuring out what we were going to be working on for the next 3 months. Other than that, I worked on my own, asked questions in chat, answered questions in chat, and I would occasionally end up getting pulled into brain-storming sessions on Zoom.
Personal
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Housing is unaffordable in many places. So remote work is good. But also wages are down and the young are at the start of their careers, so building a decent home office is going to be difficult.
Guess I'm old school (Score:1)
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You're not old school. You're just old.
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Lessons from a long-time remoter (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been working remotely for two decades. Self-employed programmer / developer / consultant, most of my clients work with me for 5-20 years at a time. I routinely go years without seeing them. Over the past five years especially, in-office presentations / training / discussions simply weren't of interest to anyone.
"Hallway" conversations are still a big part of my daily routine.
Sure, I might be working on a multi-month project for the marketing department. But last year I did something for the sales department. And before then, something for the publishing department. And the IT department occasionally deals with something of mine too.
So, every week, I reach out to someone somewhere. How's it going? Is that system still working as expected? Any troubles with it this week? How was that eggplant curry you made last week? Are your kittens shedding this week? You get the idea.
Things happen, totally unplanned and unscripted.
"Someone had an idea for a new feature. Can we make this part easier? We're doing this one thing more and more these days, can we make it less annoying?"
The most profitable conversations actually come from the most junior of contacts -- which isn't surprising, since they are the ones using things most. From those conversations, either they bring it up in conversations with their boss -- and look great doing so, having all of the jargon/stats/framing from my coaching -- or I have a reason to call the upper brass to say that they'll get more productivity out their department by adding this feature -- and I look great having the details about which employee is encountering what real-world client-facing limitation.
And yes, in a client company of 25 employees, 3 upper-brass, 5 department heads, and 15 juniors, you'd better believe that I know which ones like vegetarian recipes, which have pets, which have out-of-country family, whose job depends on my systems daily / monthly / quarterly / annually, how much time they spent on what job duties, how much money / significance they are worth to their company, and how stressful they personally find their own job.
The skill, that took me a very long time to develop, is how to have friendly non-work conversations, on the phone, during a busy (for them) work day.
Quick tip: start the personal stuff at the end of the phone call, never at the beginning. And the heavier the business topic, the earlier it should be in the conversation.
1. We need to talk about this;
2. How is that system working for you;
3. Is there any system that you want to discuss.
4. How are your kittens?
Your results may vary.
permanent video calls (Score:3)
If you want to remote work, but stay connected, run a second screen with permanent video links to those colleagues you regularly interact with. Your home could be as noisy and distracting as actually being in the office. Connecting with some people you don't like could really make the atmosphere complete.
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"Career growth opportunities" (Score:3)
A translation is in order. "even though they feel that they're losing out on the career growth that happens in the office"
What they actually mean is "even though I am judged on how much I suck up to my boss in person and on my looks instead of the work I deliver".
I feel sorry for these people. I have actually met some of them in my own company. I was part of a training course for young "aspiring talent" That course talked about goal setting, here we were asked about what we wanted to achieve. Most of us had goals: "get training in x y or z", "achieve growth here, or reduced costs, or exceed metric a b and c". Along comes two people from the head office with goals: "I want to have coffee with the head of the X division so he knows who I am".
It was one of the few times I said "are you fucking kidding me" out aloud when I actually meant to use my inner voice.
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That's a bit harsh. Maybe those two were just suck-ups, but that's hard to judge from one statement.
Promotion depends both on how well you do your job and whether or not management is aware of this. You can be fantastic at your job, but if you're working in an obscure corner somewhere with only your direct supervisor knowing what you do, then its perfectly understandable that upper management will overlook you. Your supervisor can and should advocate for you, but that's no substitute for the higher-ups dire
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That's a bit harsh. Maybe those two were just suck-ups, but that's hard to judge from one statement.
Nope, I actually quizzed them about it later on in the pub after a few beers and an apology (they took it personally, whereas the "are you fucking kidding me" comment actually was directed at their business). Their division is very much run by a circle of friends. If your name isn't known by management that's it, no career progression. When you have soft performance metrics it's the interpersonal relationship you depend on. It's a shitty way to run a company / department, but it actually exists. When you ha
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Fair enough, sounds like your judgement was accurate. I'll believe there are departments run like that, and I agree that it's a shitty way to run a business, although apparently not so bad that it forces them out of business. If those two are happy in such an environment, more power to them, but I wouldn't want to and thankfully haven't had to.
But, I'm in systems engineering, and I don't think hard targets would be an improvement on what we have, which is somewhat subjective. Do good work and nothing more a
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Thankfully haven't had a refinery-stopping event yet, although it might happen some day :)
I had one engineer come to me saying that as an instrument / safety systems engineer I would have with 100% certainty at some point in my career shut something down by accident and it was good that I got the experience early. I'm not sure "good" is necessarily right, but I have certainly taken a bit more care from that point on :D
Zoom (Score:2)
Nah, they're just being silly. (Score:4, Interesting)
Working at home should fit their (expressed) desire to pollute less and have more free time. If you can't manage WFH despite good connectivity YOU are the problem. The solution is hardening up then adapting. Got a problem? Solve that shit. I would. Not hard.
Physical commuting wastes billions of dollars in fuel/energy, is and will remain grotesquely polluting (tires and brakes continue to wear even on BEVs), while killing tens of thousands and maiming many more. Commuting is all bad and should be understood to be all bad. It's should only be done when there is no alternative and it's hypocritical to object to global warming but support commuting.
Successful long term WFH Slashdotters prove it can be done. Copy success, get paid and grow up.
Re: (Score:1)
Then design your cities better. Here in the Netherlands cycling is popular, because roads have separated sections for cyclists.
By doing so, cycling is more often than not faster and allows you to work and live relatively close by your place of employment. The real lucky ones have jobs within walking distance of their home.
A simple design change there makes a huge difference in lots of life's aspects. I have always been able to live,work, play within cycling distance. More than 10 miles I do not really consi
Re: (Score:1)
Then design your cities better.
Wow thanks Mr. Smartypants, why didn't we think of that? Just redesign our cities, it's so obvious now. A simple redesign of our entire road network in an area with 400k residents, should have it done in time to leave early on Friday and I'll be cycling into the office on Monday.
Exactly! (Score:2)
I was having this discussion with one of you Slashdot assholes about a week ago. Video conferencing and all remote work does not appeal to most people. One or two days work from home is one thing. But the preference is still in-person because most people are not socially dysfunctional techie neckbeards.
My WFH experience (Score:1)
Telework isn't for everyone, but it is for me (Score:3)
So my office went on a 50/50 schedule. 1 week in office, 1 week out of office. We use service now, so it's pretty easy to track who's pulling weight and who's slacking. Immediately my own stats start skyrocketing. Without the constant walk-in's, calls, nags and shoulder taps I was able to clear all my queues. While some coworkers said, "I treat my telework day like a half day!" I kept grinding. I gave them good advice, "Hey, if you want this thing to continue, you better show you can work remotely!"
All being said and done we have tasks, and we have incidents.
On incident's I'm 1st place, ahead of 2nd by 33%.
On tasks I'm first place, ahead of second by 75%.
It's only my first year with this office.
Our area manager sick of people slacking off decided to start reeling it in, and announced that everyone had to go to a 3 week in office, 1 week telework schedule. I negotiated. Our company has a policy if you have "at risk" people at home, my son has severe asthma. I also threw my stats in there as well. Everyone knows how hard I'm busing ass right now.
She let me stay on 50% telework, as long as I kept it quiet from my coworkers.
Moral of the story is, a lot of us GenX'ers don't want to gossip, we don't want politics, we don't care about what pronoun you prefer, we don't want to go clubbing with you after work (we got that out of our systems in our 20s) We just want to put in our 8 hours so we can spend the other 16 away from work. We don't need to be babysat, we don't need people hovering over us, we don't need anyone staring at our screens.
It's the same story from every generation. Someday GenZ will get over "doing it for the gram." You'll get old like us. You'll find staying up till 11:30 to bake your daughter cinnamon rolls because she's having woman problems is more satisfying than stumbling home drunk and falling asleep in your clothes at 2am. You'll find other peoples problems, what other people are doing isn't quite as entertaining as what you do in your time off. I don't think your generation is bad, you're just at the same point we were 20 years ago. You'll get there.
Young Google employees struggle with remote work (Score:4, Informative)
Google's HR department is famously data-driven, and their reaction to the pandemic and the company going fully remote for over a year has been to try to gather and crunch the data on the impact. By watching some rough measures of productivity (design docs, source commits, etc.) and through questionnaires to employees, they've attempted to determine the productivity impact and break it down across several variables.
What they've found is that the overall impact has been roughly neutral. But the variance across employee experience levels has been large.
First a bit about the tech promotion ladder at Google (which was largely inherited from Intel, as I understand it): It consists of a series of numeric levels with associated titles and expectations. The ladder starts at L3 because, I presume, L1 and L2 are for roles that require less than a bachelor's degree (or equivalent experience), and Google doesn't hire those, except as interns. The levels are:
L3, SWE II: This is where new grads with a BS or MS and no real work experience generally start. The expectation is that they are competent programmers, but need plenty of guidance and direction, from their assigned mentor, their team lead, their manager and their higher-level peers.
L4, SWE III: This is where new grads with a PhD and or engineers with a significant degree of work experience generally start. The expectation is that they are capable of making fully-independent progress on relatively self-contained tasks, including design, coding and testing. Aside: L3s who fail to get promoted to L4 after a reasonable period of time are let go.
L5, Senior SWE: L5s are expected to be capable of solving large, ill-defined problems, working through all phases of the process from requirements definition through design, coding, testing and productionization (including deployment, monitoring, support process definition, etc.). L5s are technical leaders and often formal team leads or managers.
L6, Staff SWE: L6s are expected to be capable of solving very large problems that require large, cross-organization teams, which they often lead, or have specific, deep expertise that is rare and enables them to solve complex problems that most other Google-caliber SWEs would not be able to solve.
L7, Senior Staff SWE: L7s own key technical areas of company-level importance. They are deep technical experts in some domain, and their work and decisions have large, externally-visible effects.
L8, Principal SWE: L8s own technical areas of such scale and impact that their work is the difference between success and failure of a business unit or product.
L9, Distinguished SWE: L9s are recognized world-class experts in their area, who lead innovative projects that significantly impact many business units or products.
(One other note about the Google SWE ladder, also inherited from Intel: One gets promoted not because their manager decides to promote them, but by actually filling the role of the next higher level. An engineer applies for promotion and a promotion committee evaluates whether they have the necessary track record of sustained next-level performance. This avoids the Peter Principle and makes favoritism-based promotions impossible. It also means that engineers interested in promotion have to actually seek out opportunities for next-level work and somehow convince their peers, TL and manager to trust them with it.)
What Google's HR found was that the impact of remote work varied widely across these levels. L3s took a large hit to their productivity and effectiveness, and generally struggled to improve their productivity over time. L4s took a mild hit to their productivity and effectiveness. L5 productivity was largely unaffected. L6s and above saw a significant increase in their productivity, producing more design docs, writing more code, etc., though the difference between these senior levels was not great.
Questionnaire responses tracked productivity measures closely. Engineers at al
????????? What are they doing for math (Score:2)