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Silicon Valley Tech Workers Angered By Proposal to Make Some Mandatory Telecommuting Permanent (nbcnews.com) 230

"The Metropolitan Transportation Commission, a regional government agency in the San Francisco Bay Area, voted Wednesday to move forward with a proposal to require people at large, office-based companies to work from home three days a week as a way to slash greenhouse gas emissions from car commutes," reports NBC News: It's a radical suggestion that likely would have been a non-starter before Covid-19 shuttered many offices in March, but now that corporate employees have gotten a taste of not commuting, transportation planners think the idea has wider appeal. "There is an opportunity to do things that could not have been done in the past," said Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, a member of the transportation commission who supports the proposal. She said she felt "very strongly" that a telecommuting mandate ought to be a part of the region's future...

Some of the nation's largest companies are headquartered in the Bay Area, including not only tech giants Apple, Facebook, Google, Intel and Netflix, but Chevron, Levi Strauss and Wells Fargo... The idea of a mandate was a surprise to residents, many of whom first learned of the idea this week from social media and then flooded an online meeting of the transportation agency Wednesday to try, unsuccessfully, to talk commissioners out of the idea. "We do not want to continue this as a lifestyle," Steven Buss, a Google software engineer who lives in San Francisco, told the commission. "We are all sacrificing now to reduce the spread of the virus, but no one is enjoying working from home," he said. "It's probably fine if you own a big house out in the suburbs and you're nearing retirement, but for young workers like me who live in crowded conditions, working from home is terrible."

Many callers pointed out that the situation exacerbates inequality because only some types of work can be done from home. Others worried about the ripple effects on lunch spots, transit agencies and other businesses and organizations that rely on revenue from office workers. Still other residents said that if car emissions are the problem, the commission should focus on cars, not all commutes... Dustin Moskovitz, a cofounder of Facebook who usually keeps a low public profile, mocked the idea as an indictment of the Bay Area's general failure to plan for growth. "We tried nothing, and we're all out of ideas," Moskovitz, now CEO of software company Asana, tweeted Tuesday.

The mandate would apply to "large, office-based employers" and require them to have at least 60 percent of their employees telecommute on any given workday. They could meet the requirement through flexible schedules, compressed work weeks or other alternatives.

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Silicon Valley Tech Workers Angered By Proposal to Make Some Mandatory Telecommuting Permanent

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  • by flyingfsck ( 986395 ) on Sunday September 27, 2020 @05:42AM (#60547488)
    They can just do what everyone else is doing and move the whole head office and all personnel to Austin Texas (Podunk North Dakota may be even better).
    • by Zocalo ( 252965 ) on Sunday September 27, 2020 @06:14AM (#60547516) Homepage
      Or maybe just get rid of the whole "big, monolithic HQ" concept? Have a bunch of smaller, regional, offices set up to allow for group video conferencing and other remote colloborative working when staff need it, throw in some traditional desks for those that want them, and allow staff to work in whatever manner, and from wherever, they and their line managers feel is best for them indivudually. My employer, amongst others in my engineering sector, have already taken this tack, and as a result we've already halved our office footprint (all prime locations in major cities) saving us millions per year in costs alone, and conversations about staff relocating to more rural, and even overseas, places of residence are already in progress.

      Seriously, I thought Silicon Valley companies were supposed to be at the cutting edge of this kind of shit, or is it just the the MBAs in charge of Amazon, Apple, Google, et al are now bricking themselves because they've spend so much money on vast, showpiece HQs that they now have no chance of seeing any realistic RoI on?
      • by flyingfsck ( 986395 ) on Sunday September 27, 2020 @06:16AM (#60547518)
        "the MBAs in charge of Amazon, Apple, Google, et al are now bricking themselves because they've spend so much money on vast, showpiece HQs that they now have no chance of seeing any realistic RoI on?" - Empire Builders.
        • by sycodon ( 149926 )

          What everyone is really pissed about is that they just spent three quarters of a million on a three bedroom, 1,500 square foot dump to be within commuting distance of their company site when they can now go find a 2,500 sq ft home on 2 acres for half that 100 miles away.

          • Or maybe that they have a family of three crammed into a 2 bedroom, and no place to setup a decent home office so now they have to look for a place that costs twice as much since they still have to commute some days and nobody is giving raises to offset the increased housing.
            • by Bert64 ( 520050 )

              Well the rule is 60% on any given day, this could mean 100% home working for some and 0% home working for others.
              If you fall into the 100% home working category, then you can move somewhere cheaper and likely have a much better home for the same cost.

      • by CODiNE ( 27417 ) on Sunday September 27, 2020 @06:43AM (#60547542) Homepage

        Middle management wants the grunts toiling in the office where they can walk around with their coffee mug and make sure everyone's working. After all once you get metrics and performance tracking worked out, what do they need that middle manager for?

        • why the h*ll is Kalifornia trying to micromanage business? enough already! this will only chase the remaining businesses to Texas.
          • This isn't California, this is a single transportation district in a very progressive city. As a Californian and as an American, its offensive to restrict my freedom of movement with in public spaces due to greenhouse gas emissions generally. Its not reasonable to equate greenhouse gas emissions with a pandemic disease. These idiots don't seem to understand the elements that have made San Francisco and surrounding areas what they are today - lockdowns were certainly not one of those elements. They are a

        • by mcswell ( 1102107 ) on Sunday September 27, 2020 @10:44AM (#60547984)

          If each division led by a middle manager had its own office somewhere different from all/most of the other divisions, the manager would get his/her wish.

          I actually came here to suggest that if each such division had its own office post-covid, possibly distant from other divisions' offices, then the worst problem with zooming would be solved: it's much harder IMO to do brainstorming online than in person.

          In my own work, we have had a number of brainstorming sessions to talk about proposals we're writing, and so forth. I *really* miss the whiteboard: and haven't found a good substitute--sharing my screen and writing s.t. as we go along is not a full substitute, since only I can write on it, and I can't easily scribble diagrams. Maybe if I had a tablet and a pencil-like thing the latter would be doable, but it's still one person using the "board." (Oops, I see there actually is such a white-board like app useable by multiple zoom participants: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-... [support.zoom.us]. I'll have to try it out.)

          Other disadvantages of zooming are the tendency to talk over each other--zoom seems to have enough latency that two people can each start talking over each other repeatedly (and not maliciously).

          And if it's a small meeting, you can see everyone else's faces, but again there's latency, and you can easily miss--or can't give--subtle body language cues. For instance, in f2f meetings I've led, if I'm at the whiteboard, it's as if I'm the only one to talk; so I sit down to encourage others to speak up. I don't think there's an analogous cue in zoom, short of calling on someone (which again gives the wrong impression).

          In sum: I think if a small department had (post-covid) its own office, separate from the larger company's other offices, at least some of the disadvantages of dispersed working would go away.

      • by martynhare ( 7125343 ) on Sunday September 27, 2020 @08:51AM (#60547746)
        Unless there's a legitimate reason to require physical access, most, if not all "office work" can be performed at home. Pre-pandemic, we had people working from home and it's likely that the pandemic will see the end of the need for most physical office work, especially given many businesses are now running paperless operations.
      • ...Seriously, I thought Silicon Valley companies were supposed to be at the cutting edge of this kind of shit, or is it just the the MBAs in charge of Amazon, Apple, Google, et al are now bricking themselves because they've spend so much money on vast, showpiece HQs that they now have no chance of seeing any realistic RoI on?

        Since when are trillion-dollar companies, worried about ROI on a fucking building?

        Apple proved that. They didn't construct a building. They built an art piece, and didn't give a shit about the cost.

    • by Can'tNot ( 5553824 ) on Sunday September 27, 2020 @07:03AM (#60547574)
      Austin is even worse for commuting, that would not be an improvement.

      It seems possible that this proposal is more about changing how we work and look at work than it is about environmentalism: an awful lot of people, including here on Slashdot, have responded very positively to pandemic-induced telecommuting, and are afraid of a return to the old way once it's over. This may be one of those things, like safety standards and overtime pay, that the free market is incapable of providing. The environmental angle, in that case, is simply an excuse. It's a quantitative measurable benefit, which doesn't require subjective arguments about quality of life.

      Of course, that this would be a mandatory 60% of the workforce seems excessive, but that would likely get nuanced around if this ended up gaining traction.
      • an awful lot of people, including here on Slashdot, have responded very positively to pandemic-induced telecommuting

        It's the very shiny silver lining in an otherwise very dark grey cloud.

  • by gnasher719 ( 869701 ) on Sunday September 27, 2020 @06:50AM (#60547546)
    Working in London, you have two choices: You live close to work, that is inside London, where you pay lots of rent for a tiny flat or are forced to share a flat, but you have an easy compute, and you are close to all the action in London. Or you live outside London, where you can get a nice home that is affordable, but pay lots both in time and money to commute to work.

    Quite obviously the first group is much less happy to work from home than the second. If there is a rule that only 40% of employees are allowed in the office at any point in time, then I'm personally quite happy to stay away to give others the chance to work at the office, because I'm in the second group. And some people in the first group would probably be willing to move further away as well.
    • by SuricouRaven ( 1897204 ) on Sunday September 27, 2020 @07:19AM (#60547604)

      Less work in London might be a good thing. The UK economy is dangerously centralised upon Mega City One. Much of the South East is just a giant commuter belt for London. It's created a severe imbalance in housing costs - you can buy an entire three-bedroom house Up North for what it costs for a single-bedroom flat in Kent, or just the deposit on a large cupboard in London. If all the office workers in London were working from home part of the time, it would let pricing even out a bit - bringing down the ridiculous living costs of London, and promoting more business growth further away in the country.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        London is entering a period of rapid decline. Brexit and the virus are really taking a toll.

        • London is entering a period of rapid decline. Brexit and the virus are really taking a toll.

          I think rumours of it's death are greatly exaggerated. On the other hand, the Tories want to damage London. It's not like London puts in many conservative seats so they feel anything they can do to damage the Labour base is fair game.

          • It's not cities like London that are a concern, it's cities like, say, Houston. Wandering around downtown London, Barcelona, Paris, Portland, New York, Florence, New Orleans etc. after dark (admittedly pre covid) was about nightlife, entertainment, dining, drinking socializing etc. Wandering around Houston downtown after dark is about the wind blowing around old newspapers.

            Cities that have something more to offer than just office work will still thrive and will still need a lot of workers

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Quite obviously the first group is much less happy to work from home than the second.

      Based on? The commuting distance is only a small part of the large equation that is working from home. Heck I just look to our own house. Both myself and my partner are only 15min from work (by bicycle, 10min by car). She hated working from home, I love it. Yet the home and the distance to work is common to us.

      Don't distill a complex concept with many variables and deeply personal motivations into a simple "depends where you live" answer.

    • Working in London, you have two choices: You live close to work, that is inside London, where you pay lots of rent for a tiny flat or are forced to share a flat, but you have an easy compute, and you are close to all the action in London. Or you live outside London, where you can get a nice home that is affordable, but pay lots both in time and money to commute to work. Quite obviously the first group is much less happy to work from home than the second.

      Break it down with this new law.

      20-minute commute from "cool hip" location in town x 2 days a week gives you a closet of an apartment that you get to try and enjoy the other 2/3s of your life.

      Hour-long commute from "boring" location out of town x 2 days a week gives you an affordable spacious home that you get to actually enjoy the other 2/3s of your life.

      We don't even have to grow old anymore to understand that life, is far more valuable in this equation. To each their own though.

    • And yet, it's better off for commute than most of the US. It's possible in many parts of Europe to live in a village of 100 and still take the train in to work in a large city. But in Silicon Valley, the mass transit options are terrible. Transit was all set up to go to San Francisco, but then it turned out to not be the center of the Bay Area universe. The rich (and probably republican leaning) Menlo Park refused to let BART go through their town, or to have a bypass road to connect the freeways, so it'

    • by fermion ( 181285 )
      London, like Bogota and Lima, has a means based test for the privilege of congesting the city. In London, I believe, you have to pay 15 pounds, sterling, shilling, what you are on, a day.. In Bogota and Peru, Pico y Plata, if you can afford two cars with the right tags you can drive every day. The rich get to do as they please.

      In the US, everyone can get a car, everyone can but the cheap gas, and everyone expects to drive to work. About the only thing that limits this is the free market forces and the

  • When I see stuff like this, whether or not I think it's a good idea, I can't help but ask, just who are these politicians representing? Do the majority of their constituents really want this to happen?

  • by msauve ( 701917 ) on Sunday September 27, 2020 @06:58AM (#60547562)
    "...shall make no law respecting...the right of the people peaceably to assemble..."
    • The people can still assemble if they want to. They just won't get paid for it.

    • A text without a context is a pretext. By removing the following "and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances" you're trying to make that mean something completely different to its actual meaning. If you're going to twist your constitution like that, you might as well claim that it's a first amendment right to work in fiddly mechanical manufacture, viz assembly.

      • by msauve ( 701917 )
        You fail at Constitutional Interpretation 101 [constitutioncenter.org].
      • If you want to keep going backward, the words before that are freedom of the press. Are you suggesting that the first amendment only allows the press to assemble for the purpose of petitioning the government? For religious reasons, I guess?

        I think the command in the list mean something.
        I think the list, divided by commas, protects a) freedom of religion, b) freedom of the press, c) right of assembly, d) right of petition, each separately. I don't think it just means the press has a religious right to ass

        • by pjt33 ( 739471 )

          Not exactly. But in context it's about preventing Congress from banning meetings in order to avoid the formulation and spread of political ideas, in the way that IIRC the Spanish Empire tried to ban book clubs because they were serving to discuss the revolutionary ideas coming out of France. It's nothing to do with working conditions.

          • So we agree it's a list, distinct things separated by commas.
            It's not saying that the press has a religious freedom to assemble to petition the government. Freedom of the press is separate from freedom of assembly is separate from freedom of religion is separate from right of petition. Cool, we're getting somewhere.

            At least I think that's what you're saying because you said as example is they can't ban assembly because ideas can be expressed. Specifically, ideas of revolution, you said - which is kinda t

      • People interpret the constitution the same way they interpret the Bible. Use your own preconceived ideas as the goal and then pick and choose the words to defend your goal; and if anyone disagrees with you then accuse them of being a commie or heretic.

  • Say what? (Score:4, Funny)

    by I'mjusthere ( 6916492 ) on Sunday September 27, 2020 @07:00AM (#60547564)

    “We do not want to continue this as a lifestyle,” Steven Buss, a Google software engineer who lives in San Francisco, told the commission. “We are all sacrificing now to reduce the spread of the virus, but no one is enjoying working from home,” he said. “It’s probably fine if you own a big house out in the suburbs and you’re nearing retirement, but for young workers like me who live in crowded conditions, working from home is terrible.”

    You whiny little shits.

    You would rather work in some cube than at home? How fucking small is your home? A doghouse in someone's backyard and sharing it with the dog?

    "Waaaahhh! Why do I have to commute into work when I can do everything remotely?!"

    "Wait, what...I'll have to? It's mandatory? Waaaahhhhh, it's unfair to me because people with big houses in the suburbs have it easier!"

    There are pros and cons to working from home, but the reasoning of this "engineer" is just pathetic.

    • What I want to know is how the fuck a transportation commission has the power to control labour relations between companies and their employees...

      • by Entrope ( 68843 )

        They operate under the slogan, "Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."

    • Re:Say what? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SuricouRaven ( 1897204 ) on Sunday September 27, 2020 @07:27AM (#60547620)

      I view it more as a transition problem. People have purchased tiny cupboard homes in the city because they need to be near to their workplace, and the only places they can afford nearby are tiny due to the very high property values in cities. So if they are told to work from home, they are stuck spending more time in their tiny miserable home with an office squeezed in next to their bed. But now they work from home, they don't need to be near the office so much any more - a two-hour commute is perfectly fine if you are only doing it twice a week. New employees would know this, and buy homes accordingly out in the suburbs or in satellite towns.

      The people are are suffering from this are the existing employees, who planned their lives years in advance around the idea of living near work. Now they are left with the choice of being cooped up in a home that isn't idea, or of moving out to somewhere more comfortable, which is itsself a difficult and expensive prospect. The people who actually own homes rather than rent are in an even worse position, as the reduced demand for homes in the city will cause property prices to fall, so if they do move out they still might not have the money to buy the home they want.

      Even if the final state is appealing, the transition to get there might be terrible for a lot of people.

      • The people are are suffering from this are the existing employees, who planned their lives years in advance around the idea of living near work.

        In other words, people who made poor life decisions.

        • by Cederic ( 9623 )

          Poor life decisions like avoiding energy sapping commutes, like having easy access to the cultural and artistic centres, like sacrificing home comfort to maximise their earning power, like deferring a family to progress their career?

          Those choices may not have worked out but I think it's stretching to claim they're "poor life decisions".

      • I can tell you, if I had known I'd be working at home for 9+ months straight I would have done things differently. Maybe get a bigger house, one that is for both my personal needs plus the needs of work. But even without that, I would have liked a month or two to prepare; go shopping for a much larger desk or a second desk, so I can have room for personal and work computers and monitors, and get more power strips for sure, maybe upgrade the internet for all the heavy duty use its getting. Even a decent ta

    • How fucking small is your home?

      Given it's silicon valley I'm going to guess that these people live in a cardboard box next to a Google fibre exchange.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It would help to have better employment laws so that the company has to pay for stuff like office furniture.

    • Well, he does bring up an interesting point.

      About 4 years ago, I started working remotely. I love where I live (close to the beach) but I wouldn't want to work from there because it's too small--I don't really have a space where I can work from. If I work from the living room, I get nothing done because I'm distracted by all the fun stuff in the living room. If I work from the bedroom, I don't sleep well. I've learned this from past history doing contract work.

      Solution: Rent an office. Something close

    • Actually I'm reminded of a book about great workplaces. One of the places featured was a google site, perhaps in Switzerland. MUCH nicer than any home I've ever lived in and I would much rather spend time there.

      Can't say firsthand. Though some of my old coworkers became googlers, I've never been invited inside to see for myself. I think the local google HQ was moved recently from one palatial building to a newer one at a more convenient location.

    • by EvilSS ( 557649 )

      You would rather work in some cube than at home? How fucking small is your home? A doghouse in someone's backyard and sharing it with the dog?

      I mean, it is San Fransisco. It's quite possible that's about the size of it (literally and figuratively). Of course what they are not realizing is that they could move AWAY from SF If they are 100% work from home. Hell, even having to go in occasionally for meetings, it would be cheaper to fly back once or twice a month while living somewhere more reasonable. Doesn't even need to be that far away.

  • Transportation board? Large office based companies? The same ones that have buses for their employees? Does not compute.

    Yet again this seems like one of those moves designed do stoke sentiment against the thing it looks like it's for on the surface.

    As for the dumbasses who wanted to work for evilcorp so bad they rented a literal closet for 2000/mo... I have no sympathy. And why should their foolishness decide it for everyone?

    • As for the dumbasses who wanted to work for evilcorp so bad they rented a literal closet for 2000/mo... I have no sympathy. And why should their foolishness decide it for everyone?

      Everybody's foolishness is deciding something for somebody else. Live in a big house and have a long commute? Your foolishness is deciding the fate of the climate for everyone. Your foolishness is deciding clogged roads for everyone. Your foolishness is deciding unsafe travel for everyone who's not in a car. Let he who is not a dumbass who wrecks things for everybody else throw the first stone.

  • by dmitch33 ( 6254132 )
    If they tell you where to work where will it stop? Will they put you in prison for disobeying the socialist/communist Democrat party? You bet that they will! Democrats ARE power hungry facists, just like FDR and Adolph Hitler. Socialist are socialists, just to name the two most infamous.
  • It's a good idea, but it should be focused on cars, because people using public transportation are consuming far less resources, and producing far less pollution. So if people drive to a train station and take a train to work, or bus, that's vastly more efficient than if they all drive to work. Reducing the number of cars driving to offices doesn't just reduce pollution, it can free up some of the astounding 40% of city land that's consumed by cars (roads, parking) - think of how much better off cities coul

  • I'm a Silicon Valley resident working at one of the companies mentioned in the article. I own a large (by SV standards) house in a quiet suburb. In theory, I should be on board with this proposal, but the reality is since we've gone to work from home, my productivity has plummeted and so I'm working far more hours to make up for it. I'm working 12 hours a day during the week and then usually 6 each weekend day. All this because I don't have access to equipment in my lab, spontaneous interaction with my

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