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Google employees who work from home could lose money

reuters.com

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Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#461

Post by misnome »

jollybean wrote: post #417
lostcolony wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the higher you climb in management the more strategic your role -should- be. Long time horizons, collecting enough data to make organizational decisions, set priorities and direction, etc. The problem is too many upper managers think their role should be tactical. They want frequent status reports to know if their long term vision is going to be met, and then any area it doesn't match up, rather than modify the vi…

" more strategic your role -should- be. " "The problem is too many upper managers think their role should be tactical. " So this is a little bit mythologizing and there's a couple problems with this perception: 1) Everything is operational, and operations require material leadership at every level, there is no escaping it. Meaning, that there's a very material 'hands-on' component to even in higher level leadership.…

I think you make some good points - and the downvotes are a little unfair - we are by requirement painting broad strokes here, because going into specific examples are veering somewhat offtopic and putting people at higher risk of being overspecific and identifiable.

> They're asking questions to become informed. Some details matter

This is true, but like you say -

> That said, good execs are rare

and the difference, in these meetings between the good asking probing questions and the bad doing it out of unaware self-justification in this case naively look somewhat the same. To go back to broad strokes, it seems easy to convince yourself that once the dysfunction sets in - that as good/motivated people leave over lack of being able to make progress, it's easier to maintain the dysfunction than fix it.

I'm in a part-academic, part-business company associated with a national lab, which means that commercial pressures towards growth are somewhat missing or ill-defined. There are lots of good people who truly believe in what they are doing, but it remains a truth that it's a lot easier to just move people around or let their contracts play out (if not permanent) than fire them, and there is clearly a reticence to promote useful or "essential" people out of the job where they are supporting things more critically that their position technically describes.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#462

Post by jollybean »

andreilys wrote: post #427
jollybean wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" more strategic your role -should- be. " "The problem is too many upper managers think their role should be tactical. " So this is a little bit mythologizing and there's a couple problems with this perception: 1) Everything is operational, and operations require material leadership at every level, there is no escaping it. Meaning, that there's a very material 'hands-on' component to even in higher level leadership.…

Strategy, in the end, if it's done well should seem fairly obvious, even boring. a product roadmap that takes into rational consideration the aspects of market dynamics. If your company is looking to make incremental improvements and not trying to do anything innovative, I agree. If you’re building the first smart phone where there exists no “roadmap” or “rational consideration”, then it’s neither going to be obvious…

Sorry, but not quite, your own example demonstrates that.

So who built the first smartphone?

It was probably Nokia. And what happened to them?

BlackBerry? They were the one's that made Google and Apple pay attention, because they built the first real baseline use cases for data networks. But was that even a smartphone?

Of course, the iPhone was not the first smartphone, but it was a breakthrough of sorts, but if we leave that product - that aside, how many companies can you think of that generally create this level of 'breakthrough' product?

Almost none.

'Disruption' almost always comes from smaller, newer companies, where there is a fundamentally new strategy that is at the core of the companies existence, i.e. it's inherent in the nature of the company itself.

The reason you might misunderstand this is likely due to the fact that popular understanding of the business world is completely skewed towards interesting and novel companies and technology.

'Business' is not what we see on TechCrunch or even the more classical business press really. The Economy is mostly made up of classical companies of varying sizes wherein my comments apply even more appropriately.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#464

Post by justwanttolearn »

Raphael_Amiard wrote: post #140
boplicity wrote: post #99

The cost of commuting on the environment is extremely high. We should be offering incentives to companies to switch to remote work. If 20% of jobs permanently switched to remote, the impact on carbon emissions would be immediate, and extremely positive.

I'm used to the conversation in here being extremely US-centric, but realize that this is much less true for European cities with good public transportation. I haven't ever used a car to go to work in my life. I'm also very concerned about this better world where people stay home to save the planet. The common level of social interactions in the modern world is already low enough in my opinion. EDIT: It rarely happen…

I've had better level of social interactions since I started staying home and the quality of my relationships are much better than the surface ones I have with my coworkers.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#465

Post by whoknew1122 »

This sort of thing is why there needs to be some sort of labor movement. Are unions perfect? No. But something needs to happen.

You don't magically provide less value to a company by moving to a place with a lower cost of living. But businesses are using the lower cost of living as an excuse to cut payroll costs. It's disrespectful to the employee, but unfortunately there's nothing an individual employee can do other than quit.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#466

Post by p_j_w »

chitowneats wrote: post #221
ashtonkem wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also awful timing. After what, 18 months of productive WFH now they want to cut salary?

If Google felt that WFH had no negative effect on productivity, they could go the route of Twitter and others. The C-level clearly disagrees that this arrangement is ideal for the company, and are disincentivizing it with pay cuts.

The C-level have had months to prepare and show data about productivity dropping and have, so far, refused to do so. At this point, they can put up or shut up. I refuse to just believe them because they say so.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#467

Post by papito »

lostcolony wrote: post #383
misnome wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, if they were paying him 10% more based on home location and commuting then there is a somewhat reasonable argument to be made. But of course, almost none of these companies are actually paying the people who live further away more, it's just management trying to enforce their will over the "peons". Our company is trying to force everyone back into the office 5 days a week. Their arguments for doing so were "p…

So the higher you climb in management the more strategic your role -should- be. Long time horizons, collecting enough data to make organizational decisions, set priorities and direction, etc. The problem is too many upper managers think their role should be tactical. They want frequent status reports to know if their long term vision is going to be met, and then any area it doesn't match up, rather than modify the vi…

Most work happens despite the managers - not because of them. The overzealous workaholic bees can be safely expected to perform heroics to get things done, ad astra per aspera. For a manager - it's a safe bet.

Only rarely that gambit doesn't work, the sacrifice ritual is performed, and the manager gets a new, even better gig elsewhere.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#468

Post by papito »

rwmj wrote: post #289
bnycum wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked from home for almost 12 years now, and I have always thought about the reverse. How much of an increase in pay would it take for me to go back into the office? Probably about 20% at least. If I were working in an office with a 2 hour commute I'd definitely take that 10% paycut to live a much better life.

I've been working from home for 18 years and there's no amount of money that would make me commute to a job. I'd take another job or work for myself rather than do it.

Is it so black and white, though. I admit that commuting 5 days a week now seems like a completely wild idea, but I am ok with getting out of the house every once in a while.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#469

Post by lostcolony »

andreilys wrote: post #427
jollybean wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" more strategic your role -should- be. " "The problem is too many upper managers think their role should be tactical. " So this is a little bit mythologizing and there's a couple problems with this perception: 1) Everything is operational, and operations require material leadership at every level, there is no escaping it. Meaning, that there's a very material 'hands-on' component to even in higher level leadership.…

Strategy, in the end, if it's done well should seem fairly obvious, even boring. a product roadmap that takes into rational consideration the aspects of market dynamics. If your company is looking to make incremental improvements and not trying to do anything innovative, I agree. If you’re building the first smart phone where there exists no “roadmap” or “rational consideration”, then it’s neither going to be obvious…

Apple didn't build the first smartphone; they made it mass market because the technology (which Apple did not invent) had gotten to where bundling it into a smartphone would provide sufficient value to a consumer to be worth paying for. There were other mass market smartphones even then; what the iphone brought was UX (so kudos for Jobs for hiring Jony Ive) and an app store (so kudos for Jobs either for recognizing the benefit of allowing others to do the work to extend the iphone's software capabilities, or for hiring someone who did).

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#470

Post by Mikeb85 »

biztos wrote: post #112
chrisseaton wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Googlers had any collective bargaining power, they wouldn't be getting salary reductions: they would be getting extra expense money for desks, chairs, and ISP upgrades. Since Google already pays the most, where do you threaten to leave to while bargaining?

That’s not what the threat is supposed to be. The threat is supposed to be that all the engineers will step away from their keyboards and the ginormous money machine will grind to a halt. But since Google pays so much it’d be both really hard to convince people to take the risk, and really easy for the company to replace them. Having employees partake of the money machine via stock is also a factor. I don’t think Goo…

> The threat is supposed to be that all the engineers will step away from their keyboards

The problem with threats is the company might call your bluff. You have to be prepared to actually walk away to have real leverage and Google pays well enough that most engineers would probably take reduced pay over walking away.

The reason strike tactics worked historically is that the work conditions were actually *that* bad and there was also the component of striking workers threatening scabs.

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