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A Hybrid Approach to Work

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Re: A Hybrid Approach to Work

#61

Post by joshuamorton »

DeRock wrote: post #52
remir wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well 60% of their workers chose to come back to the office. I guess not everybody likes working from home full time. Google can't really ignore that.

I think that 60% figure is misleading, it must represent people who have just come in to pick something up or drop something off. I'm working at another company in the valley, that is much more HW oriented, and its less than 10% of employees who are coming in with any regularity.

Almost no one is back in the office currently. The 60% is people who are expressing interest in returning to the office according to employee surveys.

Re: A Hybrid Approach to Work

#62

Post by PragmaticPulp »

huac wrote: post #55
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You either choose to be fully digital, and make digital communication the way work gets done, or you harm people out of the office. I say this as someone who managed mixed distributed / WFH teams: If in-person conversations are an advantage (and they are), no company is going to willingly surrender them for the sake of catering to the people who aren't in the office. That doesn't mean teams can ignore the remote te…

What if a front-end engineer wants to switch to back-end (or vice versa)? Do they need to stop coming into the office, for example?

No, anyone who can come into an office should come into the office. We have very flexible work hours with some core days/hours where everyone's schedules should overlap. FWIW, most people I've worked with prefer in-office to WFH unless they have extenuating circumstances like a long commute. Having a good, quiet office with respectful coworkers and management makes for a great environment.

The organization will never be perfect and stay perfect, but as long as you pay attention to it when hiring and designing teams then it can be close.

Re: A Hybrid Approach to Work

#63

Post by [deleted] »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #58
toomuchtodo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Spain: "Under the plans, an estimated 200 to 400 Spanish companies will voluntarily take part in the project by reducing their employees’ working week to 32 hours while keeping their salaries the same. The government will compensate participating businesses for any higher costs incurred by the changes, such as the need to hire additional staff or to reorganize scheduling and shift patterns. That investment will be…

> The government will compensate participating businesses for any higher costs incurred by the changes, such as the need to hire additional staff This is strange. They're paying companies to hire extra workers so everyone can work fewer hours? Sounds more like a jobs program than anything.

[deleted]

Re: A Hybrid Approach to Work

#64

Post by cmrdporcupine »

remir wrote: post #25
yamellasmallela wrote: post #5

This is really stupid. Most people do not need to be in an office to get work done. Google, and all these other tech companies, made record profits this year. I just don't get why they insist on keeping people in a seat? At least for google, offering all these on-site only perks is just a scheme to keep employees at work for as long as possible.

Well 60% of their workers chose to come back to the office. I guess not everybody likes working from home full time. Google can't really ignore that.

Anecdotally, as a Googler, I think I've talked to maybe one person on the teams I've been on in the past year who really wants to stay remote. Nobody else really likes it, and misses the office and being around people.

The new team I'm on is better, as we have a daily standup and more frequent interaction. But I still miss the face to face interaction, spontaneous brainstorming, and ability to just tap someone on a shoulder to ask for help, etc.

Remote works for some people, but it isn't working for me right now.

Re: A Hybrid Approach to Work

#65

Post by slavapestov »

anonporridge wrote: post #37
Google234 wrote: post #3

That meeting room looks super uncomfortable and awkward. Why can’t they just use some simple criteria for coming back to work: if you have two vaccine shots + time for second shot you can come in to work (unless you have a medical/religious reason not to). Also, if everyone is vaccines can we do away with mask requirements?

> Also, if everyone is vaccines can we do away with mask requirements? We still don't have any hard evidence that the vaccine stops transmission. It's possible that it keeps you from getting sick while being an asymptomatic spreader. That's why we're still wearing masks even after vaccination until we have better understanding of how the vaccine affects transmission rates.

> We still don't have any hard evidence that the vaccine stops transmission. It's possible that it keeps you from getting sick while being an asymptomatic spreader.

We absolutely do and such studies exist, and furthermore you can see a rapid decline in new cases in countries that have achieved high vaccine coverage, which would not have occurred if vaccines did not prevent onward transmission.

Re: A Hybrid Approach to Work

#66

Post by solipsism »

tdeck wrote: post #57
solipsism wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has never had a chopping block. And your speculations are wild. But hey, at least you have those two anecdotes.

The Google equivalent of a chipping block in most cases is not getting promoted. But Google has a very level-focused culture and many Googlers are highly motivated to keep getting promotions, so the incentives are there.

The Google equivalent of a chipping block in most cases is not getting promoted

Do tell, given what you know about the Google promotion process, how a choice to work remotely would translate to a decreased likelihood to be promoted (and, importantly, to an unfair degree)?

Re: A Hybrid Approach to Work

#67

Post by toomuchtodo »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #58
toomuchtodo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Spain: "Under the plans, an estimated 200 to 400 Spanish companies will voluntarily take part in the project by reducing their employees’ working week to 32 hours while keeping their salaries the same. The government will compensate participating businesses for any higher costs incurred by the changes, such as the need to hire additional staff or to reorganize scheduling and shift patterns. That investment will be…

> The government will compensate participating businesses for any higher costs incurred by the changes, such as the need to hire additional staff This is strange. They're paying companies to hire extra workers so everyone can work fewer hours? Sounds more like a jobs program than anything.

Sounds like a reasonable accommodation to help pilot a labor regulation to substantially boost everyone's quality of life. Most people work to live, not live to work.

Re: A Hybrid Approach to Work

#68

Post by elliekelly »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #48
softwaredoug wrote: post #21

> They’re testing new multi-purpose offices and private workspaces, and working with teams to develop advanced video technology that creates greater equity between employees in the office and those joining virtually. It just doesn't work when half of the team can walk by each other's desk, do some impromptu planning, and the other half are spread out across the world effectively uninvolved in these conversations. Nob…

> You either choose to be fully digital, and make digital communication the way work gets done, or you harm people out of the office. I say this as someone who managed mixed distributed / WFH teams: If in-person conversations are an advantage (and they are), no company is going to willingly surrender them for the sake of catering to the people who aren't in the office. That doesn't mean teams can ignore the remote te…

I’m not sure I completely buy that in-person conversations are a net positive. Constantly being interrupted with drop-in conversations definitely hurts productivity. The vast majority of the time those conversations could have been an email and our two minute chat is going to take me ten minutes to get back in the zone of what I was working on.

Re: A Hybrid Approach to Work

#69

Post by singron »

softwaredoug wrote: post #21

> They’re testing new multi-purpose offices and private workspaces, and working with teams to develop advanced video technology that creates greater equity between employees in the office and those joining virtually. It just doesn't work when half of the team can walk by each other's desk, do some impromptu planning, and the other half are spread out across the world effectively uninvolved in these conversations. Nob…

Xoogler here. Google has been doing remote-work from the office for years. The campuses are so big and have so many buildings that meetings are often held over VC anyway so people don't have to walk back and forth. I occasionally had VC meetings with people elsewhere in the same building. Meetings between campuses are also common and obviously require VC regardless of laziness.

VC is automatically added to meetings, every room is equipped with the proper AV, and culturally, people often actually click the right buttons to start the VC even when they aren't expecting VC guests. I don't remember ever attempting to join a meeting over VC and having the main location forget to join (although it probably happened to someone every once in a while).

At least on our team, we tended not to have those 2 minute conversations. The code-review tools are top tier, so we would use those if at all possible. Most of our non-meeting communication otherwise was in buganizer (the bug tracker), Google groups via email, Google docs, or IRC (they were getting rid of it around when I left).

I think the only exception was Nooglers. We had Nooglers sit next to a mentor on the team, and they would usually ask lots of simple questions out loud throughout the day.

Re: A Hybrid Approach to Work

#70

Post by qshaman »

Google234 wrote: post #3

That meeting room looks super uncomfortable and awkward. Why can’t they just use some simple criteria for coming back to work: if you have two vaccine shots + time for second shot you can come in to work (unless you have a medical/religious reason not to). Also, if everyone is vaccines can we do away with mask requirements?

We will be using masks until either someone breaks the ice and people just get over it or most states rollback the mask mandate. Could be months or years.
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