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

#911

Post by pdimitar » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 2:55 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #174

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…

> 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…

> I suspect that that doesn't generalize very well to being completely remote over the long term.

And when I say I am now working 11 years remote and was always more productive compared to be before (9 years in offices) you'll immediately say "anecdotal evidence", right?

Maybe look into your bias. It does look like you're trying to find scientific reasoning to support your subjective preference. That's not OK. Let's at least have an objective discussion.

Demeaning the positive results of remote work by pettily narrowing down their results to super specific borders, while at the same time implying that office work is the go-to thing to do is not being objective.

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

#912

Post by notreallyserio » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 2:59 PM UTC

throwaway-9990 wrote: post #568

cebert wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does going back to the office help with that?

(throwaway cause I'd rather people who know me personally not know this) I'll just add one more anecdote to this. I'm also far less healthy during forced-remote COVID time. Try as I might, I just can't get myself to be active and eat healthier. In the office, I biked to and from work which started me off well, and the structure of the day kept me more on top of everything too. During WFH, I don't exercise - I should,…

This resonates. I am a die-hard full-time remote worker for life but it definitely has an impact on my mental health. I'm always a few steps away from my workspace and that leads to working longer hours. However, for me, the upsides outweighs the downsides (assuming I can retire early, per plan).

I've somewhat recently started socializing with folks outside of work. That's helped as it gets me away from my computer for a while. I can only do a few hours at a time and at most twice a week before I get stressed out, but it's something.

TBH my biggest issue with working in an office was the commute. If I could get to work in a reasonable amount of time (10 minutes, no more) then I would be pretty happy to work in an office again. I'd put up with the interruptions at my desk, kitchen stink, and more interruptions if it meant I could have lunch with my peers and leave my work at work.

Unfortunately, a reasonable commute isn't in the cards for me. I could get there if I switched careers, which I might do when I retire from this one.

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

#913

Post by underdeserver » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 3:03 PM UTC

Terretta wrote: post #852

underdeserver wrote: post #758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great, but I don't want to work with you, because something you're working on or something you're responsible for is blocking me and I have no way of making progress.

Local vs. global optimization … You sure your priorities are of so much more significance than what the person is working on that they justify destroying the concentration of intellectual property creation and forcing a preemption of this other person’s task or reorder of their stack? If you’re blocked for lack of a task switch, what are you blocking in turn by causing a new interrupt and switch? Instead of crashing…

I hope this will answer all comments below as well.

Being a productive member of a team is about finding balance between what you're personally trying to get done and helping your teammates accomplish their tasks. Like everything else, it's a trade-off.

Your formulation of local vs global optimization of priorities is exactly the correct way to view this problem. My priorities and my colleague's priorities are approximately the same priorities, assuming we're on the same team or on adjacent teams. We are both shipping the same product and serving the same users at the end of the day.

That's why, like everything else in life, the truth lies somewhere in the middle - interrupting someone 10 times a day for trivial stuff you can look up yourself by reading code or documentation is a waste of the other person's time. But wasting four hours running around looking for an answer to a question that your teammate can answer in two minutes is also a waste of time. The end user is not well served by either behavior.

My rule of thumb is 30 minutes. If I can't find an answer in 30 minutes, and I think a teammate knows the answer and can answer immediately, I will ping them or come to their desk.

Obviously you have to read the room. If the teammate you want to bug looks deeply concentrated in what they're doing, they're in the middle of typing, or you ask and they say "sorry I'm in the middle of something, come back in an hour", I'll leave them alone and probably take a break or something. But if they're just back from a coffee break or a meeting, or finished up a discussion with someone else at their desk, there's just no reason to keep banging your head against your desk.

And of course I hold myself to the same standard. Being dismissive to someone who needs your attention is immature. I always assume good intent, and if someone bothers me too often, I just tell them; for some people I will ask they show me what they've already tried. I find this almost always works.

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

#914

Post by whywhywhywhy » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 3:04 PM UTC

hbn wrote: post #896

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 certainly like being able to roll out of bed and put on a coffee 10 minutes before starting work, but if I'm being honest with myself, the idea of receiving all my regular human interaction through a badly made Electron app from Microsoft for the rest of my life is just not a good idea in the long run. And maybe I'm just crazy but it seems like software even from the big companies has gotten worse through the pande…

> I certainly like being able to roll out of bed and put on a coffee 10 minutes before starting work

I did this, but now its just slipped into actually just checking slack at 10am then going back to sleep till 11:30.

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

#915

Post by underdeserver » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 3:04 PM UTC

Frost1x wrote: post #857

underdeserver wrote: post #758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great, but I don't want to work with you, because something you're working on or something you're responsible for is blocking me and I have no way of making progress.

Unless it's effecting your performance review or whatever, who cares, honestly? The obsession with efficiency and Taylorism is what's wrong with the current state of affairs in business. Not saying people shouldn't want to be productive just that understanding delays and simply pyschologically dealing with them would go a long way in modern culture. Not everything needs to happen 5 minutes ago, is late, or is so crit…

It's not just about efficiency, it's about not hitting the brakes. When you've got momentum and you're in the flow, killing it is deeply unsatisfying, and I for one have a hard time getting it back. Obviously that doesn't justify bugging someone 10 times a day, but there's a balance to be found.

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

#916

Post by eweise » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 3:09 PM 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…

Personally I'll never go back to the office except for the occasional meeting. The benefit I get to my health and well being from not commuting, is far too great. I also think that offices are just a power trip by the company leaders. They get off by walking through an office full of people. Its just another crappy part of being an employee, suffering through the command and control structure of business.

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

#917

Post by engineeringwoke » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 3:09 PM UTC

electriclizard wrote: post #324

jahewson wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think such an office environment leads to lower productivity. I too present no evidence for this claim. Personally I think I’m right! We should do it my way.

It leads to me wanting to kill myself more often and needing to invest more time in therapy, commutes, and recovery. And over half the engineers I've spoken with, who drop their facade, feel the same. Being stuck in a chair all day with people watching you is not a good life. Being forced to adhere to arbitrary social convention instead of speaking sincerely and expressing yourself is not a good life. Choosing to lay…

How does not being around other people make you your "most authentic" self? We are only human through others. Every word you've ever spoken, every thought you've ever had, is codified in a language that was created over hundreds of thousands of years by people attempting to communicate. Are you anything without that language? It is a description of how you think.

I wish it wasn't so popular for people in tech with mental issues to project them onto everyone else, instead of looking at the early family life that made them. Your parents failed if you are so afraid of the other. It is not everyone else's fault that they don't hate people.

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

#918

Post by LanceH » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 3:13 PM UTC

acjohnson55 wrote: post #630

ejb999 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely agree - and if it was upto me, they would be gone already - but when the manager is also one of those 'do as little as I can' types of people, they don't really want to open that particular can of worms.

So, who's the manager's manager? At some point, there has to be some accountability. It's not remote work's fault.

At a big company, head count is indicative of your importance as a manager.

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

#919

Post by shrimp_emoji » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 3:13 PM UTC

engineeringwoke wrote: post #917

electriclizard wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It leads to me wanting to kill myself more often and needing to invest more time in therapy, commutes, and recovery. And over half the engineers I've spoken with, who drop their facade, feel the same. Being stuck in a chair all day with people watching you is not a good life. Being forced to adhere to arbitrary social convention instead of speaking sincerely and expressing yourself is not a good life. Choosing to lay…

How does not being around other people make you your "most authentic" self? We are only human through others. Every word you've ever spoken, every thought you've ever had, is codified in a language that was created over hundreds of thousands of years by people attempting to communicate. Are you anything without that language? It is a description of how you think. I wish it wasn't so popular for people in tech with me…

Putting on clothing with collars and buttons is a huge hit to my sense of "authenticity", to start. You feel pressured to to put on airs, deal with smalltalk, etc.

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

#920

Post by notreallyserio » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 3:19 PM UTC

devoutsalsa wrote: post #770

skybrian wrote: post #201

I've worked at a startup where everyone being there was essential in how we worked. (We were all pair programming.) It was great. It beats code reviews any day. I learned a lot. But when I was at Google, we would schedule VC meetings with people in a different part of campus just to avoid the walk. Also, I worked on teams that had people worked out in many offices, mostly not Mountain View. I was surrounded by Google…

I tried pairing in an open office environment, and I'd go work at McDonald's for minimum wage before returning to that environment again. It was pure hell for me.

I've never tried it but I feel the same way. If people saw the sort of work I did to test/PoC ideas I think they'd either a) flip their shit or b) stop me in my tracks so they could do it their way.

It sounds like an absolutely terrible way to learn and grow as a developer.