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

#711

Post by _0w8t » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 7:16 AM UTC

easytiger wrote: post #687

5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Slavery is a strong word. But consider serfdom in Middle Ages.

When some historian looked at it they found that on average a serf of a French baron say 700 years ago worked less than 40 hours per week on average. Perhaps even less than 30. And there was no commute. David Graeber in his «Dawn of everything» discussed that.

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

#712

Post by nindalf » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 7:18 AM UTC

NKosmatos wrote: post #703

easytiger wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing highly paid office work with slavery is incredibly insulting.

Slavery is a strong word but in reality this is what we office workers are, modern day slaves and that’s how I understood it, as an analogy. They pay us for our work&time and they “own” us for these 40-50hrs/week. Remote working is not the silver bullet and for sure it’s not suitable for all, but for some of us it’s a life changing opportunity. Remote working opened a new door and gave us new possibilities, allowing…

Please just stop. You’re exchanging your services for money. You’re not compelled to offer your services to any particular employer.

You think that saying “I’m a modern day slave” will garner you sympathy. In reality it makes you look like a muppet.

There’s actual slavery and human trafficking still happening today by the way. These people aren’t helped in any way by you clawing for sympathy.

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

#713

Post by deanCommie » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 7:21 AM UTC

com2kid wrote: post #673

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…

> Some people love the lack of commute and less semi-forced hanging out, some people hate onboarding on a new company as a remote person and so on and so on. My team has been able to hire people from all across the country, gaining access to talent that we normally would not have been able to reach. Because my entire company has gone fully remote, if someone on the team has to take a trip overseas, they can choose to…

> I agree, but I am getting 1/8th of my waking hours back from commuting.

What about all the people who already knew spending 2 hours commuting was a terrible use of our time before the pandemic, regardless of how much of a bigger house we could get?

So we lived in dense cities, in walkable neighborhoods, where the office was a 15 minute walk away but so were restaurants, parks, grocery stores, and theaters?

But part of the exchange we made was that our houses/apartments were small, and were for LIVING not for working. We don't have a spare bedroom to turn into a segregated office, so instead the work/home life has been an overlapping mess for 2 years.

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

#714

Post by richardfey » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 7:23 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, and I think that an environment where someone can tap me on the shoulder when they need help leads to overall higher productivity, even if individual productivity suffers temporarily.

It's too easy to make such statements without measuring anything. Are issues really resolved quicker, or they /feel/ like that? Is overall productivity higher? Let's measure that?

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

#715

Post by bjarneh » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 7:27 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..

Isn't this the main problem? I hate everyone who comes barging in and wants to "resolve issues" quickly. Not saying I love remote work, but I cannot stand working a place where people are "allowed" to disturb me. I don't even log into Slack/Teams/Skype or any of that nonsense; I don't even want to be disturbed in my virtual wold.

Onsite is ideal for management; endless meetings about progress/status, we can all "align". Issues can be resolved quickly. But for those who need to concentrate for long periods at a time; this is hell. And during the pandemic, many people got used to not being interrupted all the time, and I don't think any of them want to go back to that hellhole.

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

#716

Post by watwut » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 7:27 AM UTC

bckr wrote: post #448

asdff wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get paired programming is cool, but honestly you can do it perfectly on zoom thanks to screen sharing with multiple participants. Its easier to have their screen on your screen right next to your screen thats on their screen than to huddle together clumsily with two laptops. Sometimes I'll have "office hours" on zoom, where I will just sit in my zoom room and work on my stuff and if people want to hop in and 'tap m…

> you can do it perfectly on zoom Do you experience Zoom fatigue? The sensation that, while this technology is convenient and useful, you're missing something important? I think this whole debate is really about whether people have this sensation or not.

No. I honestly experience relief, because I don't have to care about how my face looks like while being on meeting. I can sit comfortably. I walk around the room. Sometimes I do few push ups or squats. I make myself a coffee.

Zoom meetings are less tiring, because I dont have to care about how I look like. I can focus on content ... or not. I can make myself comfortable.

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

#717

Post by deanCommie » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 7:29 AM UTC

ohthehugemanate wrote: post #704

One of the benefits of remote engineering teams, is that there's wag more pressure on their "hygene" practices like a well structured backlog and good documentation. As someone with a fully remote career, it always shocks me how onsite teams tend to let this stuff lapse in favor of implicit brainshare. I wonder, then, if the last two years will improve these kinds of project practices in onsite teams. Or maybe "hope"…

At my company, very much no. We've not changed any emphasis on additional backlog structure or documentation in the last 2 years.

Tribal knowledge, and knowledge transfer presentations and video recordings remains the only way to share knowledge.

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

#718

Post by ZaoLahma » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 7:31 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…

This has been the reality for many of us for many years already.

I used to commute 1 hour every single day to an office building downtown, and my nearest colleague was in another office some 200km away in an entirely different city. Half of the team isn't even in the same time zone as I. Sure I did have other people hired by the same company sitting at desks around me, but we worked with entirely different projects so we never interacted beyond the daily "Morning!" and "Aight I'mma leave, see y'all tomorrow!"

Even my manager was located in the other office some 200km away, so I had no one to report to (be observed by!). My work was and is entirely measured by my contribution to the team, and not by where I happen to be located.

Remote working isn't a new thing that has never been tested before. It's just that you do remote working from home instead of from an office.

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

#719

Post by rightbyte » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 7:32 AM UTC

dmitrygr wrote: post #519

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…

> It works well when you already have a bunch of personal relationships between teammates that were established while the company was in-person. Clearly you have no idea how much churn is common in SV. At google after a 2-year tenure your "percent" (what percent of SWE is newer than you) reaches 50%. What personal relationships do all those who were hired remote and never saw the inside of the office have?

That is just insane churn. There has to be so much wasted work when so much project knowledge is dropped.

Two years is nothing. You just got warm in your cloths and started to perform.

Edit: There most be impossible to have a stable engineering "culture" in such companies.

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

#720

Post by hcazz » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 7:35 AM UTC

NKosmatos wrote: post #703

easytiger wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing highly paid office work with slavery is incredibly insulting.

Slavery is a strong word but in reality this is what we office workers are, modern day slaves and that’s how I understood it, as an analogy. They pay us for our work&time and they “own” us for these 40-50hrs/week. Remote working is not the silver bullet and for sure it’s not suitable for all, but for some of us it’s a life changing opportunity. Remote working opened a new door and gave us new possibilities, allowing…

I'd highly recommend you go read the definition of "slave", as well as the history of slavery around the world.

Focusing on the context of this article specifically, what makes you think that workers of a company worth 1.78 trillion dollars are slaves?