Posted on 10/09/2020 5:40:32 AM PDT by Enlightened1
Microsoft is allowing its employees to work from home permanently. While the vast majority of Microsoft employees are still working from home during the ongoing pandemic, the software maker has unveiled “hybrid workplace” guidance internally to allow for far greater flexibility once US offices eventually reopen. The Verge has received Microsoft’s internal guidance, and it outlines the company’s flexible working plans for the future.
Microsoft will now allow employees to work from home freely for less than 50 percent of their working week, or for managers to approve permanent remote work. While most employees will be able to easily take advantage of the less than 50 percent working from home option, some roles will be difficult, or even impossible, to permanently transition to remote.
Microsoft highlights a few roles that still require access to the company’s offices, including those that require access to hardware labs, data centers, and in-person training. Employees will also be allowed to relocate domestically with approval, or even seek to move internationally if remote working is viable for their particular role.
While Microsoft employees will be allowed to move across country for remote work, compensation and benefits will change and vary depending on the company’s own geopay scale. Microsoft will be covering home office expenses for permanent remote workers, but any that decide to move away from Microsoft’s offices will need to cover their own relocation costs. Flexible working hours will also be available without manager approval, and employees can also request part-time work hours through their managers.
Microsoft’s move to more flexible working comes months after the company notified employees that its US offices wouldn’t reopen until January 2021 at the earliest.
(Excerpt) Read more at theverge.com ...
But, there are a lot of people earning salaries to control all of that useless nonsense, who if out a salary are at least out of power to wreck havoc.
It is also much easier to track and control the population overall—and put them under de facto intermittent house-arrest martial law. Or to know and notice when some get escorted to quarantine camps. Etc. Etc.
Haha!
I know what you mean. I just want to work at work.
Are most Microsoft employees in the Seattle area?
If this is the case, it will mean they can all move away from King County and some other place that is less expensive to live.
This is the new trend for people who work over the internet.
It is generally bad news for the big cities and cities expensive suburbs.
Why live in King county, when you could live somewhere else where your cost of home ownership might be half or less.
Many companies are questioning the holding of real estate when workers have been out for nearly a year.
If you can go a year, you can go two years and longer.
“While Microsoft employees will be allowed to move across country for remote work, compensation and benefits will change and vary depending on the company’s own geopay scale. Microsoft will be covering home office expenses for permanent remote workers, but any that decide to move away from Microsoft’s offices will need to cover their own relocation costs. Flexible working hours will also be available without manager approval, and employees can also request part-time work hours through their managers.”
That’s a result of the lockdowns, not from working from home.
Although ‘working from home’ would make a person assume I was at my place of residence, I could be in the middle of the woods for all my employer knows. I can work anywhere as long as I have internet access.
And yes, I realize the internet connection would give away my location, but that would be the case without a lockdown and working from home, now wouldn’t it?
Right. But continued working from home makes it easier for them to keep putting us under lockdowns.
I have worked from home for years and years. There are lots of upsides and the downside is that you don’t get to know your colleagues in the same way you would in an office environment. That’s probably why being in an office about one day a week to me is the ideal.
I agree; those of us who have been able to work from home aren’t the ones (for the most part) who would be out in the streets demonstrating against a lockdown because we’ve lost income and we’re worried about taking care of our families. Plus, we’d be busy working!
And meeting virtually, even with video, isn’t quite the same as seeing people in person. It could just be me, but when doing a virtual meeting it seems like people are always talking over each other. And in a virtual setting it feels like I ought to stick to business topics and not chit-chatty/water cooler conversation.
Dell just riffed a bunch of their employees. Maybe they can get on with MS.
Right. The work objectively can be done just fine. But those informal relationship networks are important—and harder to forge remotely.
ping
“with manager approval” Even company policies change.
Be careful and don’t stray too far from the mother ship.
Change in manager, change in approval. Want that promotion? Need to be in the office.
That move to the mountains, ski slope, lake, whatever may not look like such a great idea in 4 or 5 years. Then you’ll be stuck with a house you paid too much for in a place where nobody wants it.
People with big bank rolls are showing up and paying too much for over priced properties that have been on the market for hundreds of days. Don’t think this will serve them well in time.
Too often people extrapolate the conditions of a point in time too soon and in a panic or impulsively. It is not usually a good idea.
I’ve been working from home for a major bank for at least 6 months. Office space was so tight before that they adopted a “hoteling” system a couple years ago (you reserve a cube for a day - you can only reserve up to 2 weeks in advance). This way they could ensure each cube was filled every day......and they were still squeezed for space. Office space is expensive.
We don’t return to the office until 2021 at the earliest. With everybody having worked from home for a year and proven they could do it, are they going to dogmatically insist everybody return to the office? C’mon. No way.
This will have big implications for expensive big cities. I’ve had headhunters run 100% remote jobs based in San Francisco by me. Why live there when you could live like a king on the same salary, be more free, not face traffic or fresh human turds on the sidewalk and be much safer in some nice little town 1500 miles away?
Well, that is a different issue. Subcontractors (v-dash at Microsoft) used to walk the halls developing relationships, and getting contracts. Now you cant walk the halls because you cant get in the buildings, and even if you could they are empty. Microsoft has roughly 100K employees, and 100K contractors. They also require contracts expire every June 30, and no person can be on contract for more than 18 months (unless on a managed services contract) then they have to take a 6 month hiatus. The consulting industry is going to go thru a massive transformation, and it will affect the tech giants pretty significantly.
I am a subcontractor at tech companies (Microsoft since COVID started) and in theory, sure, but in practice, no way. I know more about the personal lives of my clients now than I ever have before, because everyone wants to socialize when you get in a meeting.
I am on five years in a managed contract at another major company and there is no manager from my contracting agency instructing me my tasks.
And the pay is half of what I used to get as a permanent employee.
I thought VERY HARD about accepting a contract role on the Left Coast with their 3 hour time difference....while keeping my role here on the East Coast. Yes, I’d probably need to get a second phone number to hide what I was doing. Yes, it would mean longer days and probably giving up one day a weekend to make sure I could stay on top of both but.....the amount I would clear in a month with two salaries would be staggering. I’ve been in lots of roles that weren’t so demanding all the time that this would be possible. I might have to come up with excuses for scheduling conflicts from time to time (oh I have a DR’s appointment then) but I could do it at least for a few months.
Ultimately, I decided it was too risky and I didn’t need to be greedy. You KNOW some people are going to do it though if lots of people work remote from now on. More power to ‘em if they can do both jobs.
I am retired, but my job always required working “on the scene” at an established location. It was a dealership & that’s just the way it worked; there were no “off-site” workers that I was aware of. Anyway, after reading this article & all the comments, I was amazed at all the implications of working from home that this could mean....both the good & the bad aspects of it. Imagine being able to hold down a high level job with a big company in a big city & yet you actually worked from your home while living in Podunk, Iowa in a low rent area. Wow! No wonder some could get rich while others of us always worked for peanuts.
Will Bill Gates demand that they ALL get vaccinated???
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