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

reuters.com

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

#621

Post by oblio »

heavyset_go wrote: post #559
erosenbe0 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no firm answers. Consider health effects. Some of my colleagues struggled to maintain their health without their daily walks to the train, or just overworked themselves adapting to remote meetings and tools. Others are physically and mentally much healthier after substituting extra sleep, exercise, or preparation of healthy meals for the commute time.

There's absolutely nothing stopping those people from choosing to go on daily walks.

Personal discipline, or the lack of, is a thing.

Plenty of people benefit from imposed structure in their lives.

Yes, it's bad, yes, it's sad, but that's life. It's not all idealism and dreams.

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

#622

Post by Untit1ed »

jonas21 wrote: post #77
onychomys wrote: post #43

I 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…

I hope you don't mean the entire hospital has gone remote. I'd not be happy if my surgeon was working from home.

I assume they work for the Mayo clinic, it's not exactly your average hospital workload.

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

#624

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

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 think these generally framed studies don't prove anything, there are so many variables that may vary between projects and individuals; However they like to come up with some number and claim that it is the gospel truth.

What I know: the industry likes to emulate google, for example they like to emulate the google job interview process and google coding style guidelines. Now my question: does this decision imply that most places will start to work strictly from the office?

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

#625

Post by pigeons »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #447
makeitdouble wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Depends which tradeoffs you are comfortable with and which aspects affect one's individual definition of "better".

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

#626

Post by b0afc375b5 »

mrosett wrote: post #582
carom wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

100% agree on this. I've attended the weddings of multiple friends from my first job. I'm still in touch with 4-5 people from my second job. I haven't spoken to anyone from my team at Google since the day I left. I had good, cordial relationships with all of them, but it was also incredibly impersonal. I don't even recall learning anything about anyone's spouse, for instance.

Is it possible that in general we have more attachment with our colleagues in our earlier jobs than the later ones?

I remember when I got my first job I was extremely social and would try to make friends with anyone. But now that I'm on my nth job I don't feel the need to socialize as much and would prefer to put in my work hours and move on with my life.

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

#627

Post by astura »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #328
colordrops wrote: post #83

Earlier 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…

> if you can get good enough devs at a quarter of the cost, the salary will be that rate no matter where you live. If full remote stays around or gets bigger then this is the end state. Everyone arguing against COL based pay seems to think they'd get to keep there high salary rather then everyone getting payed less.

Yeah, and in the long term it has the potential to depress wages really, really low, because someone in, say, Costa Rica is willing to do the job for $30,000/year without benefits.

At the start of my career, 16 years ago, I spent some time abroad in a small country with some very distant family. When the topic of my career came up in conversation I remember multiple people saying that software engineer simply didn't exist as a profession in that country because there were no software jobs available there.

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

#628

Post by MattGaiser »

vanilla_nut wrote: post #536
MattGaiser wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My old company is this way. You can work from any of several offices, but work from the office you must. So even when I went in, I never dealt with team members.

Couldn't you just... work from home, and pretend to be at an office? Unlikely that anyone would ever notice...

I got caught doing this, but yes, I tried many times.

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

#629

Post by bb88 »

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…

Having worked in large buildings in fortune 500 companies, I love the ability to be able to find a bathroom stall that is unoccupied without having to walk around for 40 minutes.

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

#630

Post by acjohnson55 »

ejb999 wrote: post #148
sixstringtheory wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> disappear for days at a time, miss meetings for weeks at a time How is this not an immediately fireable offense? At least at the point of reestablishing contact where a doctor’s note or equivalent excuse can’t be furnished…

I absolutely agree - and if it was upto me, they would be gone already - but when the manager is also one of those 'do as little as I can' types of people, they don't really want to open that particular can of worms.

So, who's the manager's manager? At some point, there has to be some accountability. It's not remote work's fault.
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