News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Meta Layoffs. Parent comment

Re:Meta Layoffs by lennixm on Monday March 20, 2023 @05:33AM (#35229170)
Why would they search of a reason if they see their employees being more productive WFH and they can save a significant share of their capex by getting rid of their real estate footprints? HackerNews needs to stop with the motivated reasoning when it comes to arguing against RTO. Every single major tech company clearly has bucket loads of data showing some portion of their employees being more productive working from the office to an extent where it justifies taking the massive capex hit by bringing them back to the office. Your anecdotal experience doesn't outweigh that.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Meta Layoffs by cutemonster on Monday March 20, 2023 @07:19AM (#35229961)
> Every single major tech company clearly has bucket loads of data

People (managers and execs in this case) don't primarily make data driven decisions.

They do what's good for themselves personally

Sometimes that means following whatewer the data says -- in other cases they might rather not want to look at any data

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Meta Layoffs by bart_spoon on Monday March 20, 2023 @07:41AM (#35230136)
So there is no such thing as a cargo cult? Every time some trend picks up, be it agile, standup, open offices, WFH, return to office, over-hiring, massive layoffs, and what have you, it’s because it backed by rigorous data analysis?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Meta Layoffs by joshstrange on Monday March 20, 2023 @08:49AM (#35230725)
> Every single major tech company clearly has bucket loads of data showing some portion of their employees being more productive working from the office to an extent where it justifies taking the massive capex hit by bringing them back to the office. Your anecdotal experience doesn't outweigh that.

I think you are grossly overestimating the validity of that "data". Data can be twisted to say whatever you want it to say. I've watched management throw out results because it didn't align with what they thought, I've seen them cherry-pick and distort employee survey data to backup whatever they already wanted to do, I've experiences KPI hell and how it has zero bearing on the work being done.

These companies are not data-driven, they are people-driven and people are not coldly logical/analytical.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Meta Layoffs by JohnFen on Monday March 20, 2023 @11:11AM (#35232674)
> Every single major tech company clearly has bucket loads of data showing some portion of their employees being more productive working from the office to an extent where it justifies taking the massive capex hit by bringing them back to the office.

That's very far from clear.

[ Parent | on HN ]