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

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

#231

Post by 0cean »

dcolkitt wrote: post #7

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.…

Google did a study that showed in-person collaboration fosters innovation, which is key to success for software companies. This study is why Marissa Mayer banned remote work when she became CEO of Yahoo.

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

#232

Post by sam0x17 »

CodeGlitch wrote: post #221
sam0x17 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No FANG company has good work culture or good work/life balance anymore, and all are entangled in some morally questionable project or another. Go work for a startup.

..or government work. I get to do meaningful work, and my employer REALLY cares about me (the amount of training we get offered is amazing). UK so YMMV.

Very true. I worked for the DoD for a few years and it's definitely a good job to e.g. settle down and have a family and work for 50 years at with good job security, benefits, etc.

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

#233

Post by jumby »

ryan_j_naughton wrote: post #173
kyle-rb wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What grass though? This subset of employees seem to value working remotely above free food or massages or whatever other in-office perks. Work-from-home as a perk has a negative cost, so it's not crazy to think that companies might start offering it.

>Work-from-home as a perk has a negative cost Negative cost but also negative revenue / productivity loss if not done properly. Most data appears to show the hybrid model is the best for productivity. WFH several days a week, enabling focus and limiting distractions. Work from the office a couple days a week to enable coordination, connection, innovation, and alignment. This forced experiment in 100% WFH was clearly…

> A lot of it was to create an environment where workers worked longer hours and thus the firm got more productivity out of each worker

Also known as: working for free

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

#234

Post by m4rtink »

williamstein wrote: post #159
m4rtink wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah, but that's the thing - you need to consciously organize such events. I'm sure remote only companies have always done such informal "mixer" events but companies that were not heavily into WFH might no be aware it's needed untill all the social inteaction based stuff thats currently coasting with inertia comes to a halt.

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

#235

Post by me_me_me »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #195
DubiousPusher wrote: post #63

Friends and family keep asking me if I'm moving out of my metro area or if I'll move to the deep xurbs. But I've held off any such machinations exactly because of this. My employer has embraced WFH beyond the pandemic but all it takes is a couple bad quarters and a new CEO deciding that working from home is "part of the problem" and "work from the office" is part of some shiny new turnaround plan. And you never know…

We've seen an exodus from London, people buying houses in remoter parts of the country on the basis that they will be able to continue to WFH after the pandemic is over. Personally I think that is quite a rash decision to make right now.

> rash decision?

Maybe they like to WFH and they are good at what they do. If they can buy a house and pay half in repayments than what they were paying in rent, then is that rash decision?

I'd rather earn less and have a house and no commute.

Maybe its a case of people realising that there are other ways of living.

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

#236

Post by CarelessExpert »

spoonjim wrote: post #228
CarelessExpert wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not everything can be numerically measured. So then why shouldn't we trust individual experiences? What's the evidence that those reports are not reliable while management perceptions are if this stuff isn't measurable? > Let’s say that they have data showing that new hire productivity and skill growth is much lower when senior engineers are WFH. They’re not going to share that data when forcing senior engineers to…

I agree that Google management made this decision mostly on gut feel. But I think that it aligns with my own gut feel, which is that it’s going to be very hard for a fully remote team to invent the next Waymo car or iPad or whatever, and I also think that it will be very hard for a junior engineer to get the same learning remotely as they do colocated with 20 year tenured engineers. If I was CEO of Google I would hav…

> I agree that Google management made this decision mostly on gut feel. But I think that it aligns with my own gut feel

There's another term for that: Confirmation bias.

That's fine, but let's not pretend your opinion is any more valid than anyone else's, including the individual employees who feel differently.

The reality is no one, here, is actually basing their opinion on data. Absent that this is basically faith. Which is great 'cuz then we can all just agree to disagree. ;)

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

#237

Post by jahewson »

spoonjim wrote: post #112
CarelessExpert wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “Productivity” is not something a person can measure themselves. 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!

Not everything can be numerically measured. By what metric is Macbeth better than the Da Vinci Code? Also, not all measurements should be shared. Let’s say that they have data showing that new hire productivity and skill growth is much lower when senior engineers are WFH. They’re not going to share that data when forcing senior engineers to be in the office, since it could foment resentment of junior staff.

> By what metric is Macbeth better than the Da Vinci Code?

I like this question. Let’s say that we can create a list of 10 quantitative measures of the story, all binary and all comparative, e.g. which has the best pacing? which makes the best use of supporting characters? Now we can total up the answers and produce a number, e.g. Macbeth is better than the Da Vinci Code in 30% of our measures.

You could repeat this process pair-wise with lots of books and produce a ranking.

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

#238

Post by intergalplan »

ghaff wrote: post #230
intergalplan wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many CEOs and "founders" on LinkedIn list a half-dozen active projects, businesses, and roles (boards, "advisor"), and then blog about the "challenge" of balancing all that with family life, which they still manage to do just fine (the actual secret that cuts to the heart of how they manage that, but which won't make their blog post? None of their jobs demand much time, and they have secretaries and assistants) G…

I sometimes wonder if the widespread elimination of admins, even shared ones, for everyone below a fairly high level is a net positive. On the other hand, there's a lot more/better self-service capabilities these days and unless you have a dedicated admin who really knows you, having someone else do something for you can be more trouble than it's worth.

I've had the thought before that a "team secretary" for programmers would be a huge productivity and QOL boost. I don't think every single developer needs one, but one shared among 4-10 programmers? Might make a ton of sense.

Examples: is it in the company's best interest for an expensive developer to spend a paid hour getting some time-off set up, using company processes, rather than two minutes sending an email? If the company switches from Asana to Jira, say, or (god forbid) one developer needs to use multiple such tools because they're working for clients with certain preferences, or across teams in an org that have different tools, is all the switching time, plus the actual day-to-day overhead of using either of those systems, for every single developer, a great use of company money? Or would it be better to have a standard interface for all those administrative tools (i.e. a person)? Someone to handle formatting and proofreading proposals, maybe. All that kind of stuff that you 100% do not need someone with a CS degree and 10+ years of development experience to do.

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

#239

Post by pbuzbee »

wfhbata wrote: post #127

I’ve told myself I won’t go back to the Bay Area. SF is a joke and the peninsula is ridiculously overpriced even on a tech salary. I’ve loved the last year living outside of the Bay Area. On the other hand, the thought of whiteboard interviews at this stage in my life or taking a massive pay cut to work at a local company is not enticing either. So we’ll see what happens in a couple months when forced to decide. I re…

I agree. When I left the Bay Area at the start of the pandemic, I felt a surprising surge of freedom.

The salaries and jobs in the Bay Area are great, but they come with the big caveat of choosing between (1) living near work, but spending a fortune to rent small, old apartments forever or (2) having a better living space, but with a nightmare commute.

Why would I want to return?

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

#240

Post by spoonjim »

jahewson wrote: post #237
spoonjim wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everything can be numerically measured. By what metric is Macbeth better than the Da Vinci Code? Also, not all measurements should be shared. Let’s say that they have data showing that new hire productivity and skill growth is much lower when senior engineers are WFH. They’re not going to share that data when forcing senior engineers to be in the office, since it could foment resentment of junior staff.

> By what metric is Macbeth better than the Da Vinci Code? I like this question. Let’s say that we can create a list of 10 quantitative measures of the story, all binary and all comparative, e.g. which has the best pacing? which makes the best use of supporting characters? Now we can total up the answers and produce a number, e.g. Macbeth is better than the Da Vinci Code in 30% of our measures. You could repeat this…

Yes but “best pacing” again requires a judgment call, it’s not a numerical metric, and some things don’t add in a logical way (“The Big Lebowski” has almost no plot whatsoever but is an excellent film).
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