alt Hacker NewsInstagram chief orders staff back to the office five days a week in 2026
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"We're also offering the option to transfer from the MPK to SF office for those people whose commute would be the same or better with that change."
So wait, you'll be able to switch offices even though your team might be in the second one? What's the benefit of working remote from your team but next to random, noisy people?
Folks it’s very simple. They want to reduce labor for free.
Why? Because no company can afford the bills for LLM infra.
These companies are spending 100s of billions on building infra. Most countries have less GDP than this. The numbers are insane!
And Nvidia demands payments in cash today. Not amortized in 5 years. Every employee slashed is extra compute the hyperscalers can buy today.
Instagram chief orders quiet layoffs to please investors in 2026
fixed that title for you
Employees are encouraged to decline meetings that interfere with focus time.
It's unfortunate there wasn't more resistance by tech employees to RTO post-covid. It seemed like one of the very, very rare solutions to the systemic problems of housing and commuting in the US. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that WFH effectively doubles or even triples your total compensation when it means (a) actually affordable housing and (b) no time/money lost to commuting, especially if you have kids.
Sad, because before COVID, no one at Meta cared where you worked as long as you were getting your shit done. There was never available meeting rooms, and the open floor plans were so loud, that people would spread out all over the campus and use single person VC rooms to communicate in.
Basically, everyone trusted everyone.
This is 100% just a soft layoff.
OK, so... Employees are compelled to go into the office, so they can have better in-person collaboration. They are also encouraged not to go to meetings (aka in-person collaboration sessions), so they can have more focus time.
I haven't seen the Insta offices, but I would bet they don't have walls. In which case, you know where the best focus time is to be had? Out of the office.
Oof my employer still lets us WFH 3 days. We actually signed a new contract for it just after the pandemic. They can't have everyone in the office anyway since they closed half the floors.
If they mandate this (not sure where they'd find the space!) I'll just refuse to sign the new contract. I'm in Europe so none of that "at will" stuff. If they want to let me go they'll have to give me a package for 15 years worked.
Ps I don't actually go twice a week right now ;) More like once. None of my team members are in my country anyway so what's the point.
The headline makes it seem like every role in the company needs to switch to full-time in-office.
But anyone who was hired in a remote role is exempt.
This order only applies to in-office workers with assigned desks.
He's basically saying that they can't expect to have a hybrid work schedule, although not so strict that they can't ever work from home.
5 days is stupid. I am fully remote and I can see how face time is important. After a few years remote I am definitely feeling a little detached from the company. But 5 days makes no sense. I think 2 or 3 days in the office is perfect. You get the opportunity to talk to people and you have days where you can fully focus.
Most ridiculous is to have to come to the office and then talk to your distributed team members over Teams or Slack. Even more fun is to have them spread around the globe in different time zones .
I know better than to think I might have anything useful to add to the WFH debate, but buried further in the memo:
”More demos, less [sic] decks”
I love it, but I’m surprised that an org of that caliber needs to say it out loud. Even the top tier people get bogged down in PowerPoint limbo, I guess?
Nothing is more compelling than, as they say in show business (ie that Bill O’Reilly meme), than saying “f*** it…”:
(╯°□°)╯
┳━━━━┳ WE’LL DO
IT LIVE!Smells like management trying to recapture the glory days by brute force.
> "focus on building great products, not preparing for meetings"
That says it all. The intent is to try to spark the freewheeling, creative, startup days. Wouldn't be the first company that tries to reconnect with its startup roots. Won't be the last, either. Unfortunately, it never works, because those rockstar startup employees cashed out their stock and moved to the Napa Valley. Your workforce is now indistinguishable from IBM or Exxon Mobile. Good luck!
> Mosseri joined Facebook in 2008 as a designer and became Instagram's VP of product in 2018
Bingo. Old dog, new tricks. Good luck!
The whole memo just reeks of not trusting your employees.
White collar office society can barely cope with the relatively minor friction that technology brings from allowing work from anywhere and we're expected to believe it, it can deal with somewhat unaccountable and unknowable AI smoothly? Hard to think anything else than that we're in for a wild couple of years imo
Another winning call from Mosseri
After shitcanning the london office because he wanted to move back home(800 people gone) hes now doing the RTO, because as we know all the cool kids love working in the office.
The problem with instagram is not where people are working, its the culture of piss poor direction setting and no user experience advocates. Well none that are being listened to.
There are too many grand initiatives, which are poorly run, never really prototyped and just yeeted into years long slog that fuckup repeatedly (shops I'm looking at you)
Then to get a promotion you need to move a metric somehow. That means doing stupid user hostile stuff, like instantly shoving tits in your face.
Don't get me started on the horror that was instagram for kids
I am here to repeat my sort-of non-but-almost conspiracy theory: It's not about the work, it's about the value of the Listed Property Trust (LPT), as a construct, if the entire central business district price model behind buildings tanks.
Every company of this scale is in LPT. They have shitloads of money tied up in the declared value of the office space either they invested, or they leveraged. If it tanks in value, they are on call for the decline in value related to that.
Thank you for reading my almost but not quite tinfoil hat conspiracy theory.
ins't this the same guy who moved to london [0], just because he could control things better ?
or maybe the tide has changed from remote working so again the minions are pushed around!
[0] - https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/02/instagram-boss-adam-mosseri-...
I enjoyed working on campus for a bit - because I also lived there, sleeping, eating, showering etc. and saved a lot of money! Of course, you have to hide that and they eventually caught me...
They mean the office in the Metaverse, right?
I have a job where I'm 5 days a week. The biggest problem isn't the juniors which are all happy to leave their small apartments to go into the office. Its the senior guys with big houses out in the suburbs that have the long commute. Unfortunately the new grads are having fun hanging out together but aren't getting the face time from the seniors.
> the change applies to employees in US offices with assigned desks and is part of a broader push to make Instagram "more nimble and creative" as competition intensifies.
I don't think RTO or fewer meetings is going to reverse or even slow Instagram's slide down the enshittification chute. I recently returned to the app to connect with some friends and local communities, but the density of ads and dark patterns is pushing me away. IMO Instagram and Facebook in their twilight (which will still last another decade or so), where the path forward has more to due with extracting the remaining value from their existing users rather than outcompeting the alternatives.
I have found that at many companies with these kind of policies are selectively enforced. If you don’t show up, nothing will happen to you, until someday they need some kind of reason to fire you. This ensures you have a steady pool of employees you can drop at a moments notice, if for instance some major market crash forces you to quickly dump people in order for the company to survive.
Once employees accept tools like Time Doctor with screenshots and webcam shots, employers will accept work from home
Just a move to get rid of people, some people won't do the RTO and they can easily let them go.
What's going to happen when all the remote first companies re-neg on their commitments? Will it be an intentional way to force layoffs and resignations?
>Additional changes include fewer meetings
Where have I heard this before, wait at ever job I have ever worked at. Every time it is said, meeting time increases.
Where I worked, Friday was the only day real work got done. Why, everyone was at home, but that was my go to office day. Thursdays was my WFH day because that whole day was nothing but meetings.
I would honestly not mind 2-3 days a week but PDX is dead for tech jobs, and the pay is trash.
Can't wait to have to move to SF and pay 5k for a shoebox so I can work in an overcrowded office in a boring, crappy part of town.
You of course need a team of at least 8 people to develop the "Fuck you, log in to view any photos" pop-up box
I think its okay for there to be jobs that require you to be in a specific place, especially so if you were hired under such an arrangement originally. If there is a significant advantage for companies that are remote, then they will have a significant advantage on talent.
Layoffs by another name.
Trying to date as a single men in my 20s... 95% of women in their 20s seem to have it and then ask you if you have one or connect with her or stay in touch on it.... shitty ad infested bloatware gambling/pron promoting pos application I wish I could get rid of yesterday. Don't hate the player, hate the game.
the owners; actual owners no doubt have their finger in the commercial real estate pie too. And they are obviously not ready to get a haircut on that portfolio so here it goes. COVID-19 hasn't disappeared yet, so all this is going to do is accelerate infection and churn through more people quicker. ASHRAE did update and release ASHRAE 241 but I really doubt building managers are eager to implement that costly compliance standard especially still shell shocked from WFH
I have a question for anyone who knows.
When the productivity fell in covid days due to communications overheads and people just suddenly finding it easy to execute "lazy", did the ever so efficient corporate machinery pick this up in a jiffy and propose salary cuts to match? Or were they just too nice to do that?
Reading all of these takes stating WFH leads to poor productivity simply doesn’t make sense to me.
If your employees cannot be trusted to fulfil their responsibilities (whether in an office, their home or a tent in a woodland) that is not a geographical issue. It is a mentality issue and you are always going to face productivity issue from that employee regardless of from where they work.
I’ve been told time and time again by an array of managers in a bunch of departments and companies that my productivity never changes. That is regardless of whether I am travelling or at home. This is including being in Sri Lanka during their worst economical crisis and facing power cuts of 8 - 12 hours everyday. As a responsible adult I prepared in advance. I bought power banks which could charge my laptop and ensured they were charged when the power worked. I bought SIM cards for all mobile networks and ensured I had data. It really is simply a matter of taking responsibility of one’s situation and having a sense of respect for, and from, your employer/employee.
Forcing people into working conditions in which they are uncomfortable is only going to harbour resentment towards the company and if you are in a country where workers actually have real rights you will have a hard time firing them.
I fear that this is all simply a smokescreen for the authoritarian shift which has occurred throughout the globe. It started pre pandemic and was exasperated during it. Scary times lay ahead.