Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 1001 posts

Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4

#281

Post by berg117 »

kcb wrote: post #151
librish wrote: post #84

I 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.

Record earnings aren't entirely fake news (people are spending more time online post-pandemic, and that's not going to roll back even if things go fully "back to normal" [1]) but the stock appreciation has a lot to do with the fake-news-ification of the dollar. The CPI has always undercounted inflation, but now the divergence is worsening. Real inflation's probably 11-12% right now.

Wage earners have a couple percent more dollars every year, but the rich have massively more dollars. This is basically clathrate-gun inflation, insofar as while it's true that the rich don't compete for, say, food staples and therefore the illicitly printed money is often considered "harmless"... it goes into investment, which is a different market, we are told... the rich can and given the right circumstances will compete for other things people need, such as housing (see: Blackrock's invasion of residential real estate).

If you look at the S&P denoted in, say, houses... which I've chosen because housing is most people's biggest expense, it's actually been a mediocre market, the past 20 years.

----

[1] There won't actually be "back to normal". Just as 9/11 World didn't really end but blended into GFC World, which blended into Covid World... this one's going to blend into either European War World (if the current situation gets worse) or Climate Change World. The upper class will always need a crisis to hold over our heads (and, of course, several of these represent real crises that the upper classes did not intentionally create) to keep power.

Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4

#282

Post by erosenbe0 »

r_hoods_ghost wrote: post #236
ejb999 wrote: post #111

I 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 frequent…

There are thousands of cases in America where the child care provider (grandparent) died of COVID.

Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4

#283

Post by mumblemumble »

asd88 wrote: post #167
bubblicious wrote: post #14

this is only for those who have opted to not be fully remote. those folks have a reserved physical desk / office space at which they will be required to go 3 days per week starting apr 4th. They may switch to fully remote but cannot keep a dedicated physical spot if they do so. source: googler

Microsoft is doing something similar where you can choose hybrid work or fully remote. Personally, I think, with hybrid work, fully remote workers will go back to being second class citizens at those companies if most people choose to go back to the office (even part time).

Perhaps even less than half. At my last job, only three of the ten people on my team were going into the office, and yet the rest of us were still perennially out of the loop.

That said, I don't think it has to be that way. Companies and teams do have the ability to choose their cultures and communication styles in an intentional way. It's just that very few actually do. And this is a situation where you absolutely do not want to accept the default configuration.

Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4

#284

Post by xanaxagoras »

dsl wrote: post #211
vinnymac wrote: post #32

From my visits to Google's offices in Manhattan, I don't expect many who reside within the city, to resist this change. People will accept leaving their small city apartments and visiting the vast offices, with a plethora of services available as a welcome alternative after two years. It's those who've moved on from that lifestyle, and may have physically relocated, who will resist this change. They will be inclined…

It is vastly different in the bay area where public transit is a horrible mess and the freeways are all at 300% capacity. A friend who is a Googler is looking at a 30 minute commute to a GBus stop for a 90 minute ride each way. Going to the office is cutting productivity basically in half.

That 4 hours to and from work doesn't come out of "his time"? e.g. leave at 7 to get there by 9, leave at 6 to get home at 8.

Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4

#285

Post by edmcnulty101 »

tester756 wrote: post #183
librish wrote: post #84

I 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 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, and 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. wut? 2 years on remote and in majority of the cases I've been able to talk to somebody wit…

Same. I've never had a problem. I typically talk to my team numerous times per day via Zoom, Slack, Phone, etc.

I think the poster has an issue with their company that they are projected onto the industry.

Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4

#286

Post by fleddr »

brutus1213 wrote: post #189
paxys wrote: post #107

Earlier 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…

I think you're reading the 2 hour a day thing the wrong way. It typically refers to actual work time, meaning...doing something. The length of your work day minus all the collaboration.

It's common for office workers to have at least 3-4 meetings a day which basically destroys the day already. You'll have only tiny snippets of productive time left, which are then again interrupted by email and chat. It would actually be a challenge to come to 2 hours of productive time in such a day.

It used to be that only managers were stuck in meetings and email all day long but now the same applies to office workers that actually need to produce something. A meeting is not a product, your customers didn't order a meeting and you can't ship a meeting.

Anyway, thanks for picking up the slack. I'm back to playing flappy bird now.

Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4

#287

Post by dboreham »

skybrian wrote: post #201

I've worked at a startup where everyone being there was essential in how we worked. (We were all pair programming.) It was great. It beats code reviews any day. I learned a lot. But when I was at Google, we would schedule VC meetings with people in a different part of campus just to avoid the walk. Also, I worked on teams that had people worked out in many offices, mostly not Mountain View. I was surrounded by Google…

I worked on a Silicon Valley campus in 1999 and it was just the same: most of the people I interacted with _were_ on campus but it was seldom worth schlepping to whatever building they were in so we mostly used netnews and email.

Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4

#288

Post by runako »

librish wrote: post #84

I 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 read these and wonder what folks think about all the distributed teams in companies. Is the view that they are just generally less effective?

> I want to be able to quickly resolve any issues in person

I think this was more true for me when I was earlier in my career and remote tech really sucked. But now I see it as generally negative to have to sync with someone else to resolve an issue they (or I) am working on. In my experience, in-person bias is a symptom of a team that does not communicate well in writing (emails, Slacks, Jira, etc.).

> where someone can tap me on the shoulder when they need help leads to overall higher productivity

There is literally decades of published research that refutes this for knowledge work. IIRC the first studies were done in the 1950s or thereabouts, and I am not aware of any big studies that have come since that concluded differently. (IIRC Microsoft's campus was originally designed to give every engineer a solo office because Gates read _Peopleware.)

I will admit that working in interrupt-driven style does produce the feeling of getting more work done, whether or not that is actually true.

Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4

#289

Post by 1270018080 »

ejb999 wrote: post #111

I 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…

You SHOULD be putting the smallest amount of effort/time into work and try to get away with as much as possible. Worshiping the line going up and to the right so an executive/founder can write themselves a bigger bonus is fruitless. Putting any of your personality/self worth into work is a personal fault you should improve on as well.

I applaud all shirkers, they are the winners in your story.

Post reply on HN