The popular website Reddit has recently come out that they are having all remote workers either relocate, or quit. Many people are up in arms about that decision, especially people that aren't working for Reddit. My initial thought is that that doesn't seem very fair to the workers that were hired on remotely. If an employee is doing their job well, and creating value for the company, it doesn't seem right that they would be given an ultimatum like that. Now, before I start accusing Reddit of being unethical, it is important to point out that they are offering a "generous" relocation package or a 3 month severance package. In my opinion this does help mitigate the issue, but I feel that if their whole purpose was to get all their developers in house, they should slowly make it happen by not hiring remote workers, and only hiring new workers locally. It would be a lot slower, and might not get them to 100% in-house, but it would make things much closer to what they want, and it would be much more ethical in my opinion.
http://venturebeat.com/2014/10/01/after-raising-50m-reddit-forces-remote-workers-to-relocate-to-sf-or-get-fired/
5 comments:
I have been an active member of reddit for the last 2 years, and in that time I have seen a HUGE change in the landscape of reddit. Reddit is growing ridiculously fast and I'm sure this decision is a necessary evil in order to control the rapid growth. I have recently started working on group projects in my CS classes and it is extremely difficult to stay on the same page when we are barely ever together. It's just much smoother to be with they people you are creating something with.
I agree that this is not the best way to go about relocating. I think it's essential for them to show potential employees that they care about their current ones. In this industry the best developers can pick and choose where they want to go, and when companies do things like this, it can really damage their image. That being said, this is a much better situation than what happened at Sony Animation a few months ago (http://www.cartoonbrew.com/business/sony-pictures-animation-will-no-longer-animate-its-films-in-the-us-100102.html). They forced all their employees to move to Canada in order to recieve government subsidies.
I actually didn't know this was happening. It does seem dirty to force them to re-locate. Especially since technology today enables individuals to work from anywhere in the first place.
I am a remote worker (for Oracle) and I know that I wouldn't be pleased if my boss told me that I would have to relocate to California or leave my job. But I suppose what I like or don't like isn't really pertinent (to Oracle, anyway). It is their company, and they can shoot themselves in the foot if they like.
This is an interesting problem. I wonder what effects it will continue to make in the company. I can see it going either way actually where this change could slow down innovation and progress due to the centralization of all ideas. The atmosphere will be the same and there will be no variety. But at the same time the overall community feel to a single location will also certainly contribute growth. It will be interesting to see what happens.
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