81–90 of 298 posts
Google employees are some of the most highly compensated people in tech. I wonder how many people decide to stay at google rather than taking a 30%+ pay cut?
30% pay cut is nothing, they took 50-60% just to keep sane and do some useful work instead.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can't trust the senior managers of one of the largest revenue generating companies on the plant? With probably the highest Revenue per employee ever in the history of modern business (if not highest, up there). I dunno, seems like they are doing ok at their jobs....
98%+ of Google’s senior managers today weren’t around when the company originally pioneered and grew the business lines that pay those manager’s salaries. They didn’t build the ship, they’re just passengers. Hence why most companies fall out of the S&P 500 as quickly as they rise. If you think Google is going to stay on top forever you’re in for a rude awakening.
What people say they will do when there's no cost associated with an action and what people will actually do once a cost IS associated with the same action are frequently 2 different things. Bob Lutz, in his self-aggrandizing book "Gutz", describes the initial phase of an automobile design project where a survey is conducted asking respondents whether they would prefer a vehicle with heated cupholders. It turned out…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Based on the competitiveness of googles hiring process I imagine there's a pretty big pool of candidates for them to choose from though.
Not really. As somebody who has seen both sides of a hiring process like that, the reality is the vast majority of candidates are just awful. You can probably rule out nearly 75% of applicants right off the bat. Add in hiring laws, bureaucracy, immigration, negotiation, candidates withdrawing, and finding a good person who works for your team can take months.
I was under the impression that it was sort of like Harvard: lots of applications, but a good chunk of those denied could have just have easily been accepted if there was space
You seem to have experience with their hiring and I have none (only applying) so I have much more faith in what you're saying than my preconceived ideas.
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> taking a step back, this is such a broken way of running a department. Why?
I (in the CEST time zone) am currently collaborating with a colleague who lives in Australia, because academics often don't get to choose where they end up. Its a fucking mess, most of the time its ok, we can meet in the early morning here which is late at night there and do most work offline, but when deadlines are looming or issues crop and we have to talk back and forth over stuff urgently it basically cuts the us…
A lot more work than you think can be done remotely though, especially if you can get people together 2-3 times per year. You need good people, but then you always did.
The market is less competitive in a lot of places, which means that you can get much better people than you could otherwise afford.
That being said, it is much much much less effective for mentoring and training junior people, which is a massive concern for full remote.
It seems strange that Google management would push so hard on this. Nearly everyone I've spoken to has reported that WFH productivity has been equal, if not better than pre-pandemic. What possible upside could there be that justifies forcing the issue and hurting morale by pissing so many people off? Sure, maybe there's an argument that a fully remote company has a hard time propagating a coherent corporate culture.…
“Productivity” is not something a person can measure themselves. Sure, some people may be closing bugs faster than when in the office. But productivity manifests itself in different ways over longer time periods. Is there a strong corporate culture? Are junior staff being mentored and trained? Are new product ideas like Chromecast being thought of and shipped? The individual employee is not going to be a reliable ind…
Some ammunition for the opposition: this HBR article indicates that companies who managed the transition to remote work the best increased their productivity during the pandemic. So, a question I'd want to ask if my hypothetical boss said "back to the office everybody!" would be why we hadn't been able to adapt as well as the best of our competitors, and why we didn't want to learn from them and get that productivity boost.
https://hbr.org/2020/12/the-pandemic-is-widening-a-corporate...
I travel a lot because I’m in sales, so I’m constantly in and out of the office. I very much want to return to the office, because for me it’s a homebase, where I can connect with my colleagues. It just hasn’t been the same and I feel that my workflow has diminished without the communal nature of the office.
I'm a developer and spending 1-2 hours a day to commute to an office where I have to microwave a lunch, sit in a cubicle all day, and be forced to overhear coworkers talk about inane things while I'm trying to concentrate sounds like hell to me. Working from home has increased my productivity and made work more enjoyable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
“Productivity” is not something a person can measure themselves. Sure, some people may be closing bugs faster than when in the office. But productivity manifests itself in different ways over longer time periods. Is there a strong corporate culture? Are junior staff being mentored and trained? Are new product ideas like Chromecast being thought of and shipped? The individual employee is not going to be a reliable ind…
You say that like senior management typically makes decisions based on data and facts, rather than the reality where they just shoot from the hip using their "gut." By the same logic implied here, we cannot trust senior management to know what they're doing. PS - Also Google's measures of productivity are terrible, that's why they keep starting/killing new projects ever other week, and killed their golden goose in th…
It seems strange that Google management would push so hard on this. Nearly everyone I've spoken to has reported that WFH productivity has been equal, if not better than pre-pandemic. What possible upside could there be that justifies forcing the issue and hurting morale by pissing so many people off? Sure, maybe there's an argument that a fully remote company has a hard time propagating a coherent corporate culture.…
“Productivity” is not something a person can measure themselves. Sure, some people may be closing bugs faster than when in the office. But productivity manifests itself in different ways over longer time periods. Is there a strong corporate culture? Are junior staff being mentored and trained? Are new product ideas like Chromecast being thought of and shipped? The individual employee is not going to be a reliable ind…
And management can? Please, tell me how. Give me metrics and methods for measurement that can effectively capture productivity. What's the KPI for "strong corporate culture" or "innovation"?
Because if we can't rely on individual experiences, then clearly the only other option is systemic measurements, so please, tell me how!
I travel a lot because I’m in sales, so I’m constantly in and out of the office. I very much want to return to the office, because for me it’s a homebase, where I can connect with my colleagues. It just hasn’t been the same and I feel that my workflow has diminished without the communal nature of the office.
I don’t travel at all, just a developer in front of a screen 8 hours a day. I very much prefer to stay home and get to work by getting to my desk instead of fighting traffic. To each their own, but remote work is now a perk that some companies will offer and others won’t, not offering it will effectively cut out a fairly large percent of devs that don’t want to go back.