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).
Indeed. Be warned, remote devs. Ideally only be remote on a fully remote team. You don't want to be the one person excluded from the meeting in the hall.
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 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…
It's better on zoom because no neck strain trying to look at someone else's screen. And you get your own keyboard.
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…
I’ve been mostly remote for my entire career, about 20 years. I don’t think I’ve seen significant productivity issues with newly remote colleagues. I’ve just seen and felt a whole lot more stress. Not all because of being remote, a lot of it has come from mismanagement. In my experience people are mostly doing as well as you could expect given a dreadful situation. I don’t expect they’ll perform better under arbitrary scrutiny.
Yet again, the desires and needs of workers are trumped by portfolios with commercial real estate and portfolios with companies that rely on commercial real estate.
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…
Reminds me of feature flags. They seem sub optimal at a code level but highly beneficial at the System level.
But why force people one way or the other ? Let them make their choices. Why not give optionality and then optimize.
I don’t know much about SV traffic but in Bangalore people were routinely spending 4-5 hours in traffic everyday pre covid. I don’t see how this can be beneficial for anyone at an individual level and for the company as a whole.
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…
> 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. I have had coworkers literally disappear for days at a time, miss meetings for weeks at a tim…
You're right that there are many reasons people might seem to be underperforming in remote work, but unfortunately it doesn't really improve the situation for managers or coworkers. If many employees are spending their time in childcare instead of their job, it increases the burden on other employees who have to work extra hard to pick up the slack. It's a miserable situation, and because the reason for slacking is a protected one there's virtually nothing others can do about it.
> 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?
Central allows the majority to rule the minority. Distributed allows the majority to rule the minority but also allows groups to move to a jurisdiction where they can be the majority, or at least have a more friendly government while central does not.
Central is certainly easier for the rulers though and they have much more power and resources.
I worked at Google in KIR for the past 5 years. You calling the working conditions "atrocious" is hilarious. This is why people call Googlers entitled.
The OP is talking about tech people, obviously. I don't think we need to discuss that a table in a stair case is still awesome compared to working in a coal mine. But these conditions would be borderline even for a small company on the countryside. Disclaimer: Just going from your two comments, never saw Google's offices.
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).
Which will lead to the remote workers changing companies. If there is no substantial advantage, those companies will become second class companies.
Highly unlikely, the best and most ambitious will move to get better jobs, as they always have