I remember during the dot-com bubble of the late 90's there was talk of all the malls closing due to online shopping. At the time I thought it was silly, people want to get out, it's not all about just buying stuff online, etc. In the short term I seemed correct. Then eventually the great mall crash happened and concrete ghost towns were everywhere. Though I tend to be biased towards working in an office for my own personal reasons, I can't help but wonder if we're only half a generation away from bigger changes.
Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4
631–640 of 1001 posts
Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4
#632Earlier quoted context omitted.
But is a job just an exchange of labor for payment? I view it as so much more. Even if we look at it from a job perspective, its also an opportunity to build personal connections between team members; "I owe you one" - goes a long way. Yes you can absolutely build these personal connections online, and it may be easier for introverted people, but I would say for most people a handshake or a smile passing down the hal…
Many people have family and friends they'd much rather be around than the people they're forced to be around at work, even if those people are nice and their friends, so they don't need their job to substitute that socialization for them.
They are not a substitute for family or friends. I enjoy my co-workers' company and our little chats and social interactions provide a lot of value to me personally. I don't know why you feel forced to choose between your family and your co-workers. Seems like you've experienced some toxic/bad workplace environments.
Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4
#633Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I was working at Google I'd want to be in the office just for the experience. Know someone who did work at Google for a few years and he said he would often bump in to incredible people in the rec areas and get to talk to all kinds of interesting figures like the creator of Vim or some of the top brains of ML. It's a bit different when you are just pumping out some generic SaaS product and can do fine in isolation…
Just go to a conference once a year if that's what you feel you're missing. To sacrifice a good portion of your life commuting, just for the chance of bumping into an idol figure seems like a net loss.
Not everyone has a long commute, nor does everyone have a commute they dislike. For example many people like biking to work, or reading on transit.
Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4
#634I 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 the one thing that has unequivocally been proven though is that it works . To what degree it fits/supports peoples’ subjective state of mind is up for argument, but most professions got by just as they did prior to the pandemic. Heck, I’m a trial attorney and I never thought remote work would be feasible. After doing multiple 3+ day trials entirely by WebEx I never want to go back to a courtroom. I can skip s…
> I think the one thing that has unequivocally been proven though is that it works.
It certainly works in the short term, in an emergency situation where everybody in a sector is operating under the same conditions out of necessity.
Whether it has long-term detrimental effects remains to be determined. My team at a small-medium company that a roughly 1-day-per-week work from home policy before 2020 certainly feels less cohesive, efficient, and innovative than it did in the past.
Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4
#635I recently took part in a scrum planning meeting where the company mandated everyone to do it on site. The chaos was a stark contrast to anything we'd had virtually before that...
People suddenly forgot they could look things up on their computers, stopped using established business vocabulary, and even small things like speaking one at a time were lost on them.
During the meeting, someone decided to doodle on the paper board in the meeting room (vs. using the usual C4 format we have been using on Miro boards), creating confusion regarding what "this" and "that" block represents. There were no meeting minutes, and none of the conceptual decisions from the meeting ended up on the wiki...
Of course, many of these can be resolved with better discipline, but it really feels like the medium invites chaos. That same team works very effectively in virtual meetings, with the ability to supplement the discussion with well-thought messages via Slack or Wiki comments. Meeting recordings and audio transcripts help for better meeting notes and recording the meeting conclusions and outputs in a way that's transparent and searchable.
Also ... gifies, how can anyone stand a 1h meeting without emojis and gifies is beyond me :).
Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4
#636Earlier quoted context omitted.
But is a job just an exchange of labor for payment? I view it as so much more. Even if we look at it from a job perspective, its also an opportunity to build personal connections between team members; "I owe you one" - goes a long way. Yes you can absolutely build these personal connections online, and it may be easier for introverted people, but I would say for most people a handshake or a smile passing down the hal…
I totally get the idea, but when a company can easily fire you for no good reason it's hard to develop any real attachment to a job so that it is something beyond just an exchange of labor for payment.
Most employment contracts in the US (sorry for the US centric bias, I don't know where you're from!) are at-will, which means either party can walk away at any time for any reason. That doesn't stop us from forming deep friendships and relationships. Its the human condition.
Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4
#637Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Honestly that's their issue that can be fixed. There's no reason someone with a Google salary needs to be 2 hours commute from the office.
Maybe they want to own a house that's not $3m dollars
Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4
#638I 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…
UHM.. AMA? What do you do / what have you built?
Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4
#639Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Just like how racial discrimination leads to worse outcomes yet FAANG is 99% White/Asian? Especially at higher levels.
Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4
#640Earlier quoted context omitted.
That seems like a high number. Different external surveys I've seen tend to show about 20% wanting to come in five days with a permanent desk, about the same (or a bit more) fully remote, and the rest 2 or 3 days. That's not just developers though.
That 20% slips to 5% in major urban downtowns where average commute is 1 hour and you have to wait for trains in uncomfortable weather. Cost of extra hour or 90 minutes of child care is also stratospheric.
Do you have data backing that? I definitely agree about super-commuters, but OTOH in NYC: with small apartments and convenient transit commutes, there are some extra reasons to want to go back to the office.
I'm willing to bet the super commuter effect is stronger, but I'd be surprised if it were strong enough to change it to 5%. E.g. almost all my coworkers live close to the office here in NYC.