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Google's push to bring employees back to offices, some say they'll rather quit

businessinsider.com

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Re: Google's push to bring employees back to offices, some say they'll rather quit

#151

Post by pumaontheprowl »

hpoe wrote: post #13

It seems to me a big divide in this question is people who derive a sense of identity/value/community from their workplace and those who view it in a more utilitarian light. For me I much prefer WFH but I also have 3 kids and a wife that I'd rather spend time with than any of my co-workers; however when I was younger I enjoyed associating with my co-workers because I didn't have as much other social connection.

I'm purely utilitarian (I don't derive any sense of community from my workplace), but I still strongly prefer working from the office. For a number of reasons:

* Access to company cafes means I eat healthier, spend less time cooking/cleaning, and save money on food.

* Face-to-face interaction with co-workers makes debugging problems much easier (no more wondering what they're seeing on their screen; just walk over and see).

* Arriving at and leaving the office provides a fixed start and end to the work day where I can completely detach from work outside those hours.

* There are no internet connection problems when my workstation is hardwired into the company network.

* It's much easier to get exercise/go to the gym when I'm already out of the house.

Re: Google's push to bring employees back to offices, some say they'll rather quit

#152

Post by MattGaiser »

andor wrote: post #143
cglace wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how engineers pretend that they are the only ones acting rationally. It's as if they are playing chess and can never think there might be a reason behind the other players move, only their plan makes sense.

If engineers acted rationally, we would not have so many technology fads.

I would argue that is rational for the engineers who become less employable if they aren't doing the latest stuff and creating new libraries.

The interests of engineers are often extremely detached from whether development is cost effective and maintainable by others.

Re: Google's push to bring employees back to offices, some say they'll rather quit

#153

Post by hknd »

notdonspaulding wrote: post #14

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…

I really want a heated cupholder now - how did I never hear for this before. This is a gamechanger.

Re: Google's push to bring employees back to offices, some say they'll rather quit

#154

Post by dont__panic »

sriram_sun wrote: post #83
notdonspaulding wrote: post #14

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…

GOOG folks, FB is recruiting stressing on "remote". Call a recruiter today!

Ah yes, remote within 100 miles of a Facebook hub. Which are... NYC and SF. Not exactly "remote" by my definition if you only have the option to live in the suburbs of a major metro area.

Re: Google's push to bring employees back to offices, some say they'll rather quit

#155

Post by capableweb »

djrogers wrote: post #132
theflyinghorse wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A new job that carries same prestige and benefits?

I think you're greatly overestimating the prestige of working at Google, or the value of said prestige.

I think that's true for sure. In fact, I know of more workplaces where when doing the hiring, previous experience with Google is a negative rather than positive, as previous ex-Google employees have introduced more problems than solutions, together with strongly holding a "better than you" attitude towards others.

Re: Google's push to bring employees back to offices, some say they'll rather quit

#156

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

sam0x17 wrote: post #138
djrogers wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're greatly overestimating the prestige of working at Google, or the value of said prestige.

If you know how to leverage your experience you can literally walk in as the CTO of most small startups if you are an ex-googler and don't act like a drone.

CTO of most small startups don't get paid as well as a typical moderately experienced Google engineer. And the job is a lot harder and higher stakes (which is something that some people prefer and others do not).

Re: Google's push to bring employees back to offices, some say they'll rather quit

#157

Post by Iv »

theflyinghorse wrote: post #116
sam0x17 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While technically correct, I think you are dramatically overestimating the difficulty ex-googlers have in getting a new job.

A new job that carries same prestige and benefits?

I wonder if ex-googler is not more prestigious than "googler" actually

Re: Google's push to bring employees back to offices, some say they'll rather quit

#158

Post by capableweb »

wfhbata wrote: post #150
naniwaduni wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... when you already work for Google?

If we’re making that comparison, absolutely. Both are in the ads business, but I get actual utility from one company’s products and the other company’s products make me feel worse at the end of the day. I realize that many people love social media and derive happiness from FB, but it’s just not the case for me and the main reason I couldn’t work there.

> If we’re making that comparison, absolutely. Both are in the ads business, but I get actual utility from one company’s products and the other company’s products make me feel worse at the end of the day.

I wish I could know which company is which by your comment, but I can't, any could be in any place here.

Re: Google's push to bring employees back to offices, some say they'll rather quit

#159

Post by williamstein »

m4rtink wrote: post #139
alexwilde wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having read Work Rules! by Laszlo Bock, It does not seem that strange to me... The Google culture and leadership, right or wrong, hold on to the belief that the spaces they cultivate, do more than just enhance productivity. For example, they believe that (regardless of how rare it may be) their spaces create opportunities for teams to bump into each other and build solutions/products out of that.

I think there is something to that - a lot of stuff used to come up from random encounter with other peopl in the company and yet that almost totally absent now. A lot of stuff seems like it is still coasting based on that momentum (eq. people you met at a conference or at lunch) yet new connections are not being made. That could be a problem over time unless people can met at the office again in some form and go to…

Random encounters that lead to interesting things can happen when working from home. For example, I work on Jupyter and last week there was a "Jupyter realtime collaboration workshop" and at one point participants were randomly divided up into breakout groups. I ended up sharing and learning all kinds of interesting new things with a small group of random people I've never met before, and making important connections. It felt very much like the sort of random things that could happen in person, with the main difference being that it was even more efficient than it would be in an office or conference center.

Re: Google's push to bring employees back to offices, some say they'll rather quit

#160

Post by sam0x17 »

sam0x17 wrote: post #138
djrogers wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're greatly overestimating the prestige of working at Google, or the value of said prestige.

If you know how to leverage your experience you can literally walk in as the CTO of most small startups if you are an ex-googler and don't act like a drone.

The top tier of these get paid _higher_ than googlers
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