Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4 • Hacker News Board

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

#641

Post by fibonachos » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 4:55 AM UTC

closeparen wrote: post #562

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…

That sounds amazing, I dearly wish for "library rules" on the floor. The office has plenty of social and collaborative spaces that aren't where my keyboard/monitor/charger are, and switching to one of those spaces when you're going to have a conversation is a good norm.

That’s how it’s been at my office (even pre-pandemic). The open office is relatively quiet, there are several areas good for quiet conversation, and lots to conference and phone rooms. It’s great for those days I need to get out of the house, and just as productive.

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

#642

Post by ceras » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 4:58 AM UTC

DataJunkie wrote: post #401

VBprogrammer wrote: post #116

We've just done a survey at work to talk about about attitudes to returning to work. The results were basically that 95% of people are happy with work from home but want more social gatherings. Most people would be happy with visiting the office once every two weeks. I expected a small fraction to be extremely pro return to office but actually these didn't appear at all in our survey. What we did have is a couple of…

Top down entirely. It's based entirely on propaganda that Google has the best perks and that serendipitous hallway conversations lead to innovation. Zero evidence that that is the case. And other companies have the same, if not better, perks.

It's been years since I worked there, but I gotta say nothing compares to the Google NYC office in my opinion, as far as offices go. If you know a better office let me know :)

I still know people there, several of whom started going in again as soon as they brought back the big perks like cafes even though it was fully optional.

(The companies I've worked at since then seem to have fewer people going in during this optional period, though still some.)

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

#643

Post by chii » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 5:01 AM UTC

ggm wrote: post #505

bckr wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"QDU" returns nothing relevant on a google search. What does this mean? > and my own in-head foldback PA What is this? I think you're saying you don't like Zoom, and I'm with you on that.

Quantified Distortion Unit. It's a telco measure of voice signal quality, from the 64kbps and before days. 1QDU was the maximum tolerated impact on a voice call, and was the goal for line card compression to try and mux voice calls together. It's not just zoom. All digital av processing ads delay. Some removes av sync. Decoherence of visual lip sync and sound interferes with any perceptual clues you get looking at pe…

> you have a visual of apparently local people and an actual of 200+ms of delay, loss of sync, and a confusing outcome.

then how does a military use radio to communicate between platoons and companies properly?

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

#644

Post by chii » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 5:03 AM UTC

munificent wrote: post #194

voisin wrote: post #123

My problem with remote work is that it exacerbates a divide between blue and white collar workers that breeds further resentment, which has already led to all sorts of social ills. I’m not sure the individual benefits outweigh the collective rage.

I agree 100% that the growing divide between winners in the information economy and losers is a major source of societal ills. We should address it by making the lives of blue collar workers better (higher minimum wage, universal healthcare, high density housing), not by making the lives of white collar workers worse.

it's easy and cost free to make white-collar workers' life worse, where as it costs a lot of capital and money to increase the minimum wage, etc, for the blue-collar workers.

The people who would have to make the sacrifice are the capital holders and high tax payers - they certainly don't want to do this (in aggregate of course - even if some individuals would choose such a sacrifice).

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

#645

Post by smsm42 » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 5:05 AM UTC

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.

You do understand that "I personally prefer" and "actually works better" and "better for everybody involved" are three different things, do you?

We were told for years that it's an established fact that remote work is inefficient and untenable. We have proven - with an experiment that we wouldn't rather go through, but we had no choice - that this is false. That doesn't mean it is for everybody - but it doesn't also mean that the thing you prefer is for everybody. So why it's ok to force one of these things onto everybody? That's what the managers should be able to answer.

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

#646

Post by 8note » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 5:08 AM UTC

opportune wrote: post #210

adenozine wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily, there will be plenty of remote firms to scoop up all the engineers Google is about to hemorrhage. What a miserable work culture it must be for them to even have the nerve to declare this. Downvote away, I’ll be hiring some of them! ;-)

But Google let most people who asked to go remote, go remote. And said several times that if you haven’t asked to go remote yet, they’ll give you a 30 day notifications before you need to go back I hate threads like these because people will circle around generic talking points while missing all the nuance and context behind this actual decision, like allowing almost any SWE to go remote that asks, giving a heads up,…

There's still more nuance here - you can switch to remote, but will you get the same compensation?

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

#647

Post by emrah » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 5:10 AM UTC

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 want to be able to quickly resolve any issues in person, not over voice call or slack

If you mean this literally (i.e. walk over to someone's desk/office the moment you have an issue to resolve), this is highly disruptive and partially the reason why some people hate going into the office, particularly engineers.

I understand some people prefer to meet in person but it's not an absolute necessity.

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

#648

Post by bradlys » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 5:11 AM UTC

dymk wrote: post #332

rr808 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to strangle my wife and kids if I have to stay in my apartment with them another two years.

This is why I moved out of the city into a big house with a backyard and home office. And it's cheaper than the apartment.

I mean - that's great if you want to give up all your existing friendships and possibly your family. Hard sell for the rest of us.

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

#649

Post by asadlionpk » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 5:14 AM UTC

listenallyall wrote: post #219

Personally, I'm 100% down with a hybrid work week. However, I'd like to see companies introduce "remote weeks", i.e. just like ensuring people have vacation days, the company should enable, perhaps 8 weeks per year of remote/offsite work. I'd be a much happier worker knowing I had multiple opportunities to visit distant family for more than a long weekend, travel internationally, do some adventures, etc, as long as I…

Google has announced these too. 4 weeks of work from anywhere, exactly as you described them.

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

#650

Post by bradlys » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 5:15 AM UTC

ceras wrote: post #642

DataJunkie wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Top down entirely. It's based entirely on propaganda that Google has the best perks and that serendipitous hallway conversations lead to innovation. Zero evidence that that is the case. And other companies have the same, if not better, perks.

It's been years since I worked there, but I gotta say nothing compares to the Google NYC office in my opinion, as far as offices go. If you know a better office let me know :) I still know people there, several of whom started going in again as soon as they brought back the big perks like cafes even though it was fully optional. (The companies I've worked at since then seem to have fewer people going in during this o…

Yes - this is a component of offices that I think people are skipping. Google and some other companies have world class offices and really cater to their employees quite nicely.

I think many here think of an office as an open office with 500 desks crammed together and nothing else. I know those offices - I've worked at plenty. I do not want to go back to that. I've seen what my current work has done for their "renovations". It's soul draining and will be a terrible office environment. Needless to say - I'm looking for a new job because I do want some office time but I don't want a soul sucking office like the ones we currently have at many companies. Google's isn't perfect (and it is huge YMMV - I've seen some that are fantastic and some that are horrific!) but it's usually far better than others. At least there's an option to enjoy some nice perks and office culture! Many places don't have any of that. No activities - no team building - no peer bonding - no anything!

Amazing if you hate people - horrible if you love interacting with new folks.