The Pulse: Could a 5-day RTO be around the corner for Big Tech?

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A year ago, Amazon became the first tech giant to bring staff back into the office for the full five days per week. Back then, I analyzed the reasons for the change, and whether other workplaces would follow suit by dropping the widespread hybrid policy of 2-3 days/week in the office.

Now, Meta employees in the Instagram division have become the latest subjects of a full return to the office, following an announcement by the social media platform this week.

Instagram’s 5-day return to office

Instagram employees received the unexpected email on Monday, reports fellow Substacker, Alex Heath, who acquired a copy of the message. It was sent internally by Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri, who wrote:

“1. Back to the office: I believe that we are more creative and collaborative when we are together in-person. (…)

2. Fewer meetings: We all spend too much time in meetings that are not effective, and it’s slowing us down. Every six months, we’ll cancel all recurring meetings and only re-add the ones that are absolutely necessary (…)

3. More demos, less decks: Most product overviews should be prototypes instead of decks.

4. Faster decision-making: We’re going to have a more formalized unblocking process with DRIs, and I’ll be at the priorities progress unblocking meeting every week.”

This decision by Meta affects around a quarter of company staff, and it’s hard to imagine other divisions not following Instagram’s lead; after all, everything in Mosseri’s memo likely applies across the business.

Five years ago, CEO Mark Zuckerberg predicted 50% of Meta staff would work remotely by now, which didn’t happen. Indeed, with Instagram’s new 5-day RTO, I’d be surprised if 5% of Meta folks work remotely in two years’ time.

The reason for Insta’s RTO seems rooted in the leadership’s belief that in-office is more productive, as indicated by the top bullet point of Mosseri’s message. That message in full:

“I believe that we are more creative and collaborative when we are together in-person. I felt this pre-COVID and I feel it any time I go to our New York office where the in-person culture is strong.

Starting February 2, I’m asking everyone in my rollup based in a US office with assigned desks to come back full time (five days a week). The specifics:

• You’ll still have the flexibility to work from home when you need to, since I recognize there will be times you won’t be able to come into the office. I trust you all to use your best judgment in figuring out how to adapt to this schedule.
• In the NY office, we won’t expect you to come back full time until we’ve alleviated the space constraints. We’ll share more once we have a better sense of timeline.
• In MPK [Menlo Park, the HQ], we’ll move from MPK21 to MPK22 on January 26 so everyone has an assigned desk. 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. We’ll reach out directly to those people with more info.
• XFN [cross-functional] partners will continue to follow their own org norms.
• There is no change for employees who are currently remote”.

From what I’ve seen of Mosseri from afar, he seems like a pretty straight shooter. It’s clear that he feels in-office creates more energy, and in Mosseri’s defense, I hear similar from many startup founders and leaders who say remote work causes a bunch of headaches: it’s harder to spot motivational problems and performance issues, information travels more slowly, and rallying teams is harder.

There’s no doubt that running a full-remote company is a lot of effort. There’s often-overlooked labor involved in hiring, onboarding, performance management, team celebrations, and even company-wide meetings – none of it is easy.

Linear is a full-remote company with nearly 50 people working there, which recently published details about how it operates. They’re introducing the concept of “coworking hubs”, flying in teams for in-person events, and holding regular off-sites, while being careful to hire people who fit the culture.

My feeling is that remote work policies at tech companies are going to become questions of their leaders’ preferences. Many devs prefer remote work: there’s fewer interruptions, more deep focus, and less commuting. Most of us would probably be just as productive – and probably more so – than when being interrupted in-office.

Leaders who prefer full-remote can cite flexibility and easier hiring from a larger pool of candidates as clear benefits. Meanwhile, those most comfortable with in-person will always have enough reasons to justify a 5-day RTO, along the lines of Mosseri’s reasoning. Advocates of hybrid setups cite balancing of focus time and efficiency.

In today’s job market, any company that pays closer to the top of the market can probably get away with five-days-a-week RTO. Meta is in this space, and although I’m sure plenty of devs will dislike the change, the alternative is to go out on the job market, accept a pay cut to join a new company, and start rebuilding your internal network.

Since we’re in the midst of a weird job market, it makes switching jobs more difficult than before, when the job market was very hot. In this respect, Instagram has external conditions on its side. For devs at Meta, one upside is that Big Tech experience opens more doors, even in this tough job market.

One caveat is that a 5-day RTO is unlikely in places where it’s hard to hire the right people. So, AI engineers and those working on AI products should be pretty safe, for instance, because those roles are incredibly in-demand, as indicated by the trend of higher base salaries for AI engineers. Based on that, few companies should want to push those workers to quit to join competitors.

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