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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

#681

Post by Simon_O_Rourke »

adenozine wrote: post #197
munificent wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We've proven that the big tech companies can go fully remote and not completely crash and burn, that's about it. Agreed. We've proven that big tech companies can continue to be productive for up to two years going remote. I suspect that that doesn't generalize very well to being completely remote over the long term. It works well when you already have a bunch of personal relationships between teammates that were es…

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! ;-)

This makes perfect sense, some people will be suited to some days on-site, and some off-site, but there will be others like myself where the commute is now a deal breaker.

If you get some talented engineers to join you because of the shortsightedness of Google then kudos to you, and more the loss for Google.

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

#682

Post by koide »

crummy wrote: post #576
asdff wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every single thread I see on this has this exact same comment. It's like a bot wrote it. Is it that hard to imagine that an onboarding experience remotely can actually be done well, or that you could actually make friends with people existing solely on zoom? I think people are making that assumption, just because it feels right or maybe because their own org is just throwing juniors by the wayside and hoping covid wi…

Has anyone had a great onboarding experience remotely? How did it go?

I had a very well organized and documented remote onboarding experience. There was a list of meetings to schedule with the names of the relevant people and tasks to undertake, as well as a dedicated mentor that you met with as often as you'd like. At the end you met with at least one person on each team and got lots of time with your own team while they explained the systems to you.

Of course this is at a company that was remote before the pandemic.

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

#683

Post by hericium »

This particular company's main business is spying. It may have been harder to creep on cult members from a distance.

Maybe Google employees are behaving less like "Googlers" at home when priorities shift to family and life. Behavioral changes are harder to enforce remotely when you cannot model cult member's personality by pointing out "ungoogley bahavior" multiple times a day and shaming them in other ways.

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

#684

Post by morgante »

dekhn wrote: post #205
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! ;-)

There is already a huge google engineer hemorrhage. A number of principal engineers and other folks I thought would be google lifers moved to snowflake. I don't expect this to affect Google's ability to continue to grow at 15-20%, though. There will be armies of younger people who still want to jumpstart their career there.

Totally anecdotally, lagging comp and bureaucracy are much bigger sources of attrition than remote work. For the most part, anyone who wants to go remote can.

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

#685

Post by RubyRidgeRandy »

ejb999 wrote: post #111

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…

an interesting phrase is working as little as possible. This is an organizational issue more so than a motivation one. I work remote and am assigned all my work on a monday that is due by the end of the day friday. If I don't do it, there will be questions asked. Because of the way our company is organized, working as little as possible means working exactly as expected.

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

#686

Post by nannal »

5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #669
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…

People should have an option to go fully remote, not be forced to do X number of days because reasons. 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…

> What I will counter is that remote is almost certainly better for the environment and social mobility

Neither of which have an appreciable business use in the near to mid term & are therefore totally irrelevant to an employer.

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

#687

Post by easytiger »

5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #669
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…

People should have an option to go fully remote, not be forced to do X number of days because reasons. 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…

Comparing highly paid office work with slavery is incredibly insulting.

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

#688

Post by bsimpson »

MattGaiser wrote: post #460
devoutsalsa wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got a job that was onsite. On the first day I learned no one in my team worked in the same office.

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.

I was the only person in the SF office for an eBay team in Portland. The other CA people didn't bother coming into the office.

That was the loneliest job I've ever had. I was alone in a bank of desks, basically every day. The nearest group of people had nothing to do with my team.

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

#690

Post by Cd00d »

bubblicious wrote: post #14

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

That's interesting because an outsourced recruiter contacted me recently about a Google role and very clearly needed to confirm that I would be able to return to an office one day a week.

I was confused why 1/5 was so much more powerful than 0/5. I sorta get 3/5 if you have a commitment to in-person culture. Anyway, the 1 per week doesn't at all line up with your more credible 3 per week.

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