Earlier quoted context omitted.
Go in the stall?
Feels embarrassing to always go in the stall when I obviously only need to pee.
There is a 100% chance that nobody will notice or care.
Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4
441–450 of 1001 posts
Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4
#442I once flew in to the Bay Area from Europe for several meetings, but the most important one was with a team at Google. We were trying to finalize a deal and they really needed to be on board. I arrived, checked in and was shown to a meeting room. A few minutes after the meeting was supposed to start the receptionist came scurrying in and connected me to the meeting via that cube looking meeting machine they had in ev…
When I worked as contractor I was flown out to an office in London. They paid for all the tickets and hotels for two weeks. They said it was critical to have us in the office. After the first 1 hour introduction meeting I never saw them again. Massive waste of money on their end but I had a great time experiencing a new country and even took a weekend trip to Brussels which was awesome.
Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4
#443I'd prefer to work an environment where I can't get interrupted synchronously by someone wanting their problem resolved that moment. Also, one thing with those in person interactions is you have no artifact of the interaction. Slack or tickets are great for documenting how decisions are made. But ultimately, I have no desire to waste an extra 5 to 10 hours of my life just driving back and forth to sit at a different…
> I'd prefer to work an environment where I can't get interrupted synchronously by someone wanting their problem resolved that moment.
FWIW, I found synchronous interruptions to be more of a problem when remote. Too many people used Slack messages or video calls for everything because it was only a click away, as opposed to having to get up and walk over to someone’s desk
> Also, one thing with those in person interactions is you have no artifact of the interaction. Slack or tickets are great for documenting…
Slack is terrible for documenting. It needs to be reserved for ephemeral communication.
Forcing people to search through Slack archives works when the team is small and company is new, but it becomes useless at scale.
Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4
#444I'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…
Lonely is an incredibly accurate way to describe working at Google. Everyone says the office perks are there to trick you to stay, but our work area was quieter than a library and no one hung around. If people were talking they'd legit catch themselves and be like, we should grab a conference room. Incredibly polite but also an uncomfortably quiet environment. I think a lot of people just wanted to put in their hours…
Man that's sad.
Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4
#445I 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…
It's not proven but we'll get there.
There's virtually impossible to refactor big corporations into real remote organizations - they're "remote bolt-on". For them, to remote is only to cope with COVID, other than that it's mostly a liability.
We probably need to wait for another half-decade to see it unfold - to see if there could be any "remote native" company that can disrupt the market and challenge big corporations.
Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4
#446I 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. Agreed. We've proven that big tech companies can continue to be productive for up to two years going remote. I suspect that that doesn't generalize very well to being completely remote over the long term. It works well when you already have a bunch of personal relationships between teammates that were es…
Every single thread I see on this has this exact same comment. It's like a bot wrote it. Is it that hard to imagine that an onboarding experience remotely can actually be done well, or that you could actually make friends with people existing solely on zoom? I think people are making that assumption, just because it feels right or maybe because their own org is just throwing juniors by the wayside and hoping covid will end rather than thinking about how to train people electronically from the ground up.
Remote work in a lot of roles, especially knowledge working, is just the way forward and will be how these things function in 50 years. Companies that are able to scout talent globally will simply out compete those that insist on a local labor pool. It makes no sense to perpetuate commuting, just in terms of the environmental damage it causes, when we've shown that this work can still be done without having to load a single ~200lb occupant and spend energy moving them + 3000lbs of metal around for two hours a day five days a week. If you are finding your juniors are falling behind, then step up instead of giving up and work hard to come up with a viable pipeline that isn't "well hopefully in two months we are back in the office." Plenty of companies and organizations and research groups have functioned entirely distributed for years now even before covid. It's not rocket science.
Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4
#447Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think Google having a company-wide policy on this is nuts. Teams vary a lot. They should probably be left to make their own decisions. This seems rational until you are actually responsible for managing a large organization. First off, the article itself states that Google is giving a lot of flexibility ("Employees not prepared to return April 4 also can seek a remote-work extension, Google said. Since last June,…
> This seems rational until you are actually responsible for managing a large organization. This reads like an argument against single management for large organizations. If you need to fit thousands of square pegs into holes, perhaps it's not the best approach in the first place.
Central vs distributed government. Which do you think works better?
Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4
#448I 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 get paired programming is cool, but honestly you can do it perfectly on zoom thanks to screen sharing with multiple participants. Its easier to have their screen on your screen right next to your screen thats on their screen than to huddle together clumsily with two laptops. Sometimes I'll have "office hours" on zoom, where I will just sit in my zoom room and work on my stuff and if people want to hop in and 'tap m…
> you can do it perfectly on zoom
Do you experience Zoom fatigue? The sensation that, while this technology is convenient and useful, you're missing something important?
I think this whole debate is really about whether people have this sensation or not.
Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4
#449A gift to Meta recruiters, brought to you by Sundar.
Facebook's remote work policies aren't even as generous as Google's as far as I can tell. They have level requirements.
From: https://www.metacareers.com/life/what-remote-and-flexible-wo...
> As of June 15, Facebook is opening up remote work to all levels across the company. Anyone whose role can be done remotely can request remote work.
Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4
#450I've been going back in to work 1-2 days a week and find it's been insanely productive and had allowed me to reconnect with coworkers in a more effective manner. I was previously sold on 100% WFH but now I understand the importance of some face time. That said, I will never voluntarily come back 5 days a week. For me, the office is for discussions, socializing, and working out problems in real time. Home is where I get actual work done. That would be different if I had an actual office at work, but I don't.
Another factor to consider in the rush back to the office: gas prices may dramatically spike depending on the situation in the Ukraine. It will likely be a significant driver of inflation (and stagflation) and may keep folks from willingly commuting at pre pandemic levels.