eerily similar to yahoo a bunch of years ago before they went on their death spiral.
Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4
231–240 of 1001 posts
Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4
#232I think anyone who's claiming that remote work has been "proven" to be better or worse is wrong. There are some studies but they use estimations and proxies, carrying the same flaws as doing performance reviews based on lines of code. We've proven that the big tech companies can go fully remote and not completely crash and burn, that's about it. Some people love the lack of commute and less semi-forced hanging out, s…
> I think that an environment where someone can tap me on the shoulder when they need help leads to overall higher productivity, even if individual productivity suffers temporarily.
Seriously, what’s the difference between this and instant messaging?
I would argue that the ability to defer interruptions is enough to rely on IM, instead of physical interaction.
Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
Luckily, there will be plenty of remote firms to scoop up all the engineers Google is about to hemorrhage. What a miserable work culture it must be for them to even have the nerve to declare this. Downvote away, I’ll be hiring some of them! ;-)
There is already a huge google engineer hemorrhage. A number of principal engineers and other folks I thought would be google lifers moved to snowflake. I don't expect this to affect Google's ability to continue to grow at 15-20%, though. There will be armies of younger people who still want to jumpstart their career there.
Google needs long tenure more than other companies due to its large reliance on in-house software. This is yet another move to shoot themselves in the foot. Luckily, network effects will keep them in business for another few decades.
Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
Both engineers and managers at big tech companies can get by working 2 hours a day. And remote vs on-site doesn't affect that. This has been true since well before WFH. As for the location-based pay part, I bet none of the people who were furious about getting "adjusted" after moving out of the Bay Area ever complained about their colleagues in Bangalore working the same amount as them and making 1/5 as much.
I get a bit annoyed hearing about the 2 hour a day folks. They are probably forcing their peers or managers to take on more work than is their fair share. I'm in management now .. as an engineer, I most certainly used to work over 8 hours a day (probably 12 hours, counting all the time I spent studying to keep up). Now, in management, the hours have actually gone up .. I now have to worry about things my team is doin…
Maybe you need to challenge where your values come from and who they benefit. There is nothing so urgent that people need to work 12 hours a day. There is (for most people) nothing that you will value from your time of working hard for a tech company in the future, except perhaps money. If you turn your argument around, people who want a good work-life balance hate people like you because you are willing to die for your corporate master and contribute to the dog-eat-dog mentality that wrecks people. There is something reasonable between 2 hours a day and 12.
Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
Despite not making any sense, cost of living adjustments based on your location seem to be the trend that we are heading toward. If you contribute the same work, it seems that it shouldn't matter where you are located, but companies are sociopathic by nature and will reduce costs anywhere they can get away with it. This opens the door to the next step of having salaries match the lowest common denominator - if you ca…
In my experience, it's very easy to see how a software engineer works. Just look at the commit logs. Sheesh. I managed an SWE group for years. It was easy-peasy to unobtrusively keep an eye on things.
As I grew more experienced at my job, I submitted fewer and fewer CLs, with fewer lines. Eventually, I was just making config changes. You probably would have thought I wasn't very effective but the reality is the small number of changes I made were in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. I've seen other folks who are commit fiends and a lot of their code just didn't stand the test of time, or lacked good tests, or failed at scale, or were just copies of something elsewhere with the class names changed.
I reserve my greatest praise for those who delete code without visible regressions or increased complexity.
Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4
#236I have been fully remote my entire career (several decades), in fact in 30+ years have never been on site anywhere for more than 2 weeks total. Wouldn't have it any other way. But as a counter-point, seeing a whole bunch of people who were never remote before, how little work they are actually doing, it is no surprise to me that a lot of employers are going to start forcing - to the extent possible - employees back i…
In the UK a lot of people during the pandemic suddenly found themselves having to look after their children full time because the schools were closed and there was no childcare, while also having to work, possibly coming down with Covid, and during the first lockdown at least having to queue for hours every time they went to the supermarket. Even when the lockdowns we're relaxes my colleagues with kids would frequently find themselves back working from home because their children were sent home because one if their classmates had Covid, which immediately reduces productivity. A lot of people also didn't have suitable places to work at home. Lots of my colleagues were working on their kitchen tables next to their partners and children, or sat on their beds. It's easy to be smug about remote working and critical if those who suddenly found themselves having to do it at no notice if you're already set up for it, have no caring responsibilities, have space, and aren't in the middle if a pandemic. Less so if the above applies.
Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I personally prefer a company where everyone's on site. I want to be able to quickly resolve any issues in person, not over voice call or slack That works for companies with less than 100 engineers. Everyone seems to have forgotten the good ol days where you had in person meetings and had to dial in half the team from Europe or include Fred who is working from home.
It doesn't matter how many engineers there are as long as the teams are colocated. Yes you will need to have zoom meetings with other teams but interaction within the team can be almost fully in person.
This was almost never my experience.
The actual time to get feedback in an office is between four hours and two days. Managers are almost never at their desks because they are attending meetings all day. Same for senior engineers. If you need a quick response IM is your best option.
Your whole team of engineers will almost never be in the same place. Someone will be in a meeting, somewhere. Or hiding trying to get work done. You might get lucky and the person you need to talk to is at their desk, but they will be busy trying to catch up before or after a meeting.
In office communication is already asynchronous. Every day you will run into these problems. The idea of (especially open) offices fostering communication is a complete fantasy.
Email and chat are the way actual communication is done in corporate America. Synchronous communication isn’t feasible.
Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4
#238I have been fully remote my entire career (several decades), in fact in 30+ years have never been on site anywhere for more than 2 weeks total. Wouldn't have it any other way. But as a counter-point, seeing a whole bunch of people who were never remote before, how little work they are actually doing, it is no surprise to me that a lot of employers are going to start forcing - to the extent possible - employees back i…
I think a small percentage of people are self-motivated, and more productively at home, but watching this all play out for the last 2 years makes me realize that an awful lot of people are going to try to get away with absolutely anything they can - including working as little as possible - when allowed to be on their own.
It's not that they're trying to "get away with absolutely anything". It's that their survival incentive is not to get fired, and they've been operating in that mode for years if not decades. The less you do, the less likely you are to inadvertently piss someone off and lose your job. Overperformers get fired faster than underperformers, who can usually kick around in the system for years.
Take a risk and win, and your boss makes more money. Take a risk and lose, and your income drops by 100%. The incentive structure rewards doing as little as possible, and that's not even necessarily a bad thing, because there are organizational situations in which it's better for people to be underutilized than overtaxed and therefore unpredictable.
Capitalism is an abusive system, but there's no escape because the legal system is on the abuser's side. How do you survive an abuser, if you can't get away? You become meek, reactive, and passive.
Remote work isn't for everyone, and unfortunately there is a non-trivial percentage of the workforce that actual does need someone watching over them to make sure they do what they are supposed to be doing each day.
They weren't getting much done in the office, either. In fact, in the office regime, the problem employees were interfering with other people's productivity. In the WFH world, they do less damage.
Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4
#239I think anyone who's claiming that remote work has been "proven" to be better or worse is wrong. There are some studies but they use estimations and proxies, carrying the same flaws as doing performance reviews based on lines of code. We've proven that the big tech companies can go fully remote and not completely crash and burn, that's about it. Some people love the lack of commute and less semi-forced hanging out, s…
> We've proven that the big tech companies can go fully remote and not completely crash and burn, that's about it. Most big tech companies are public. Record earnings and stock prices throughout the pandemic prove more than just not crashing and burning.
I don't understand how you could think the rise in stock price is related to anything specific people at Google did vs massive spending increases by companies in google ads since it was one of the only ways to advertise with the lock-downs.
Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4
#240I work for an extremely famous hospital in a small city in Minnesota, and we've gone 100% remote forever in large part because then the hospital doesn't have to pay for heating/lighting/internet/etc for all of the buildings that used to be full of us. Eventually they'll probably sell the offices entirely. I'm not sure why Google thinks it's economically worth it to have people come back in, I'd imagine the savings mu…
You could save even more money by firing your staff and winding up the company.