661–670 of 1001 posts
I don't feel I've been truly appreciated by management, really.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why did you hate it? An excuse to take a walk in Bay Area weather in the middle of the day doesn't seem that bad to me.
I hated it because it took 5-10 minutes. I’d rather use that time working, or meditating, or doing anything else of my choice than having to walk. It’s also pretty messed up when it rains, or is cold, or I have a disability or a foot in a cast. Etc etc. Having to do things not essential to a purpose is better to make them optional. If I like working, I can walk around while on the remote meeting
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…
me too. however, the reality is that I haven't worked in a company where everybody is in the same location in over 15 years. under that circumstances, fully remote is the better choice and I will not be forced back into an office.
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> it get's very difficult to manage a large company without at least some sort of consistent policy. Why would that be true? Trust your staff to behave like adults, and trust your team leadership. This feels like a cop out from leaders who don't understand how to manage uncertainty, as opposed to an actual requirement.
I would like to know if you posted that because you have actual experience managing a large team, or you are just taking out of your **.
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I don't know about disappearing for days and weeks, but as a manager I can say that in practice, performance problems are often subtle and hard to detect. I don't subscribe to the idea that you have to be at your desk to get work done, and I do my own best work usually hiding away somewhere quiet. However , with the middle- to low-performers, I admit it's disquieting to suspect that some people are working only an ho…
> I admit it's disquieting to suspect that some people are working only an hour a day A tiny minority might be doing that but I dont think the vast majority work only 1 hour a day. Are also saying that you can figure out an employee is working only 1 hour a day when you are in the office?
And no, I can't tell if someone is "actually working" just by being in the office. I have no interest in standing behind them at their desk all day.
On the other hand, I had one case where someone on my team had like zero committed code in weeks, and was WFH'ing several days a week (pre-pandemic) as an arrangement he'd made with his previous manager. When we had "the talk" about his low performance, one of the things I asked him was to stop with the WFH except for emergencies. That did, in fact, help keep him more accountable for his time, and being physically present helped him interact with the rest of the team and spend time whiteboarding, etc. And performance overall improved.
Is there a lesson there to generalize? Maybe, not sure. It's all very context- and individual- dependent.
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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,…
15% is still something I consider significant. Why were they denied? Are there people getting preference based on manager or their own personal reputation?
I would be calling up my manager three days earlier and saying can I come in today or do I have to wait to the 4th, I really want to come in! And then when they said sure come in, I'd yell April Fools! I don't feel I've been truly appreciated by management, really.
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…
This is the problem that remote work solves. It gives you some sense of autonomy so that you don't feel like a completely subservient slave.
Also you said objectively it has not been proven but your subjective opinion is that it's better to be in office. What I will counter is that remote is almost certainly better for the environment and social mobility two things which have been destroyed for our generation.
Being forced to live in expensive cities, pay extortionate rent or be held hostage by a mortage and suffer the misery of public transport, yeah no thanks.
It seems like the best of both worlds to me. Most days we have maybe 8-12 people in the office, so there's generally enough people to get collaborative office conversations, but not so not so many people that it's constantly noisy. And if the weather is bad, or I wake up late, or I just don't feel like going in, I work from home and I don't have to worry about it.
We're a relatively small team, though, so I don't know how well it scales.