Google employees who work from home could lose money

This goes double, once you're a family. Negotiating between partners and children about which things to cut back on is unpleasant.

My advice (which I've followed imperfectly) is that if you have the income to make this reasonable, leave a cushion where you can handle setbacks without having to make the hard choices.

So many issues transcend the narrow scope of some product, which is why 'the effect' as you say, generally goes pretty far, meaning, executive leadership input which is essentially necessary.

It's also a good example of how circumstances can create existential scenarios that have nothing to do with classical strategy and yet take up so much time and be pretty important to a companies evolution.

To me, strategic issues like acquisitions, major product extensions or internalizing parts of the supply chain (i.e. Apple doing cars, their new ASIC chips) are big, CEO level things, those are not general executive strategic things.

The VP at Apple in charge of desktop software products has a 'strategy' that is not going to remotely sound like a 'strategy'.

I believe that the iPhone, since it's inception, has evolved along the lines of efficient product operations, not strategy. Or rather, their 'strategy' would be summarized by choosing 1-3 major consumer issues to focus on, having a new physical design to support that, and all of the marketing, carrier sales, ops and production issues resonating efficiently around it. Their 'strategy' is in a way just 'effective and coordinated product, product marketing, manufacturing, marketing operations' etc..

When I applied it was for a different LOB (line of business). I was applying for tmobile customer service. I did their tests, we spoke of compensation, hours, days available, all that good stuff. I told them I was tired of being on call 24/7 and wanted regular scheduled hours, so I could know exactly when I get off work, plan accordingly and have a life.

They told me I was going to be interviewing with three senior people from my team.

They kept asking me weird questions that had nothing to do with the job I had applied for (T-mobile customer service).

At the end they told me I was hired, but at the very end they tell me its for a totally different LOB (applied and tested for tmobile, was instead hired for Goodsam Roadside Assistance).

They told me everything would remain the same- hours, comp, everything.

All lies of course.

So I get to training and find out hours are all over the place, no set schedule, and even better? -I never knew when I would get off work. Once we took a call we had to complete it.

Imagine someone in BFE Canada, with a 40' RV, with a busted axle, and I have to now manually call all over Canada for 8+ hours to find a mobile mechanic willing to go for our paltry rates,oh and it's three ferrys to get there!

They would not let us hand off calls, we could not take breaks even for restroom while on a call. Some calls went well over 8 hours. It was fucking disgusting.

When I had enough of this they kept reiterating that we owed the company our time since it was our responsibility. When we accepted the job we took on a responsibility to our customers, our coworkers but most importantly to Qualfon. When they gave us a schedule we had to adhere to it or be fired...but they could change our hours/days on a whim and we had to take it. When they had mandatory overtime we would be fired if we didn't work it as it now counted as 'scheduled time'

They didn't seem phased when I mentioned that what they were doing was illegal AF (no breaks, no telling about hours, refusing to let you off calls etc). When I bitched about not having a life because I never knew when I got off work, and how this LOB was a bait and switch, they kept reiterating we needed to keep our promises. I asked what about what we were promised by goodsam and qualfon, how they needed to adhere to our scheduled hours, stop changing days/hours, etc. I was pulled into an office where the site supervisor tried to bully me (a giant dude used to getting his way) we had a screaming match and I offered to take it outside. I mean if you get out of your chair while screaming and stand in my face jamming a finger in my chest, the way I see it you want a fight and I'm happy to oblige.

Then starts the screaming for security (which we didn't even have!), which caused laughter since everyone heard what was happening.

Anyways I and half the floor walked out that day, and everyone above a phone operator was fired and replaced within a month.

This was the same company that when covid started refused to allow social distancing as it meant wasted space, and refused to allow masks as they 'muffled the operator's voice'

Moral of the story is every company, every single one, sees what they do as 'good' and anything the employees do/want is 'bad'.

They will, with a straight face, fuck you over and expect you to say 'thank you, sir, may I have another' .

And they all wonder why no one wants to be in these situations anymore, especially not for bullshit comp.