From September 5th, virtually all of the approximately 65,000 employees still employed by the company will have to be in the office at least three days a week. Attendance is monitored daily and failure to comply may result in an employee being dismissed.
As a result, thousands of meta-employees have returned to their offices. After a sudden shift away from previously highly conducive remote work policies, they faced a lack of space and privacy as well as productivity issues.
“It’s a mess,” one current employee said of Meta’s RTO so far. “And all because it is difficult to onboard new employees remotely. Instead of solving this problem, they simply decided that we would go back to exactly what was before.”
To sit on the floor
A persistent problem, according to three employees, is the lack of conference rooms for team meetings. The sources did not want to be identified because they are not authorized to speak to the press.
Everyone noted that this was also a problem at Meta in 2019, before the pandemic triggered a wave of office jobs being done from home. However, the company had fewer employees back then.
Now it’s a challenge to even get a conference room, people said, let alone one large enough for an entire team to meet for an hour or two.
One person noted that after days of trying to get a room for a meeting at Meta’s Menlo Park campus, a small room became available. The person jumped on it, even though most of the team ended up sitting on the floor while they worked through an issue during the meeting due to a lack of chairs and table space.
“We have been working to address this issue with more collaboration spaces and workstations that enable video calls and focused work,” said a Meta spokesperson. “It’s important to note that we have around 80 offices around the world and we are working to ensure our teams have the best possible experience as we welcome people back to the office.”
Hot desks
Adam Mosseri Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for WIRED
“We haven’t figured out hybrid work yet,” Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, wrote on Threads. “Assigned desks mean lots of empty chairs. Hotel desks mean lots of unknown faces. Pods are good for privacy but take up a lot of space. We have a lot to figure out.”
“Hot Desks,” as they are called, are unassigned desks that must be booked in advance. Last year, Meta announced it would move to a partial desk-sharing model in its offices for those who continue to work from home most of the time.
With RTO, some people who were working from home virtually full-time and lost assigned desks, as well as those who officially became remote workers and gave up, are having difficulty getting and keeping desks when they need to come into the office .
“It seems impossible to get a desk for a long enough period of time,” said one employee. The person noted that one day he had to move between hot desks on different floors in Menlo Park to get through a work day where he had to attend meetings.
The Meta spokesman said any issues with hot desking should be resolved if the desks were properly booked through Meta’s online table reservation system, which allows a person to book a desk a week in advance for up to three days in a row.
“Nobody gives up”
However, such frustrations do not lead to resignations.
“Nobody quits,” said one employee. Most people were trying to do what they could to stay busy, the person noted, especially given the harsh biannual performance reviews and the continued requirement that team leaders decide that 14.5% to 16.5% of their employees were underperforming categories “meets most” expectations and “needs support”. Meta’s other categories for performance expectations are “redefined,” “significantly exceeds,” “exceeds,” and “meets all requirements.”
“They made it almost impossible to get an ‘overage,'” one employee said of mid-year reviews that ended in early summer. “The next round will be interesting.”
Applications must be permanently remote
Meta allows anyone who has worked at the company for 18 months or more to apply to become a permanent remote employee under the new RTO policy. Many employees have done this, although the approval process appears to be slow.
“Hundreds of people have applied and have not heard back,” said one employee. They expect the backlog of remote work applications to be “in the thousands.”
According to a note to RTO from Meta Human Resources Director Lori Goler, remote work applications received since the mandate was announced in late August will not be reviewed until the end of October. Applications are then reviewed monthly.
Pending approval of these requests, everyone with an assigned office must show up three days a week, regardless of their team’s distribution.
Come join us on Zoom
One employee stated that his team primarily works in other offices. This effectively means that their mandatory work in the office is the same as working from home. Except when commuting.
Others will be in the same boat for at least several more weeks, waiting for remote work requests to be approved.
“People just come to the office to be on Zoom,” the employee said. “Why?”
Are you a meta-employee or someone else looking to share insights? Contact Kali Hays at [email protected], via the secure messaging app Signal at 949-280-0267 or via Twitter DM at @hayskali. Make contact using a device that is not designed for work.