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

#961

Post by simpthrown8id » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 5:23 PM UTC

Here's my reaction: If google wants me in the office, then fine, I'll just arrive an hour later and leave an hour earlier ~ the length of the average commute. It's obvious that the company values seat time in the office more than 25% extra productivity. Google chose to put their offices in the least accessible areas of the country and there is a price to pay for that. Either you pay higher salaries or put up with less producitivity.

It just reminds of those articles from the 99s when companies hired people to be in the office right before the dot com bust.

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

#962

Post by ThalesX » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 5:25 PM UTC

me_me_mu_mu wrote: post #294

My opinion is that for a couple of years companies were able to coast on the retained employee knowledge while remote. However as people leave the company or new people join, it is pretty difficult to ramp people up to be as effective as their replacements. I don’t work at Google so maybe everyone who works there is a genius, but I’ve noticed this at my work where it takes quite a long time for people to be 100% effe…

Anecdotal. My best friend, about 5 - 6 years ago was doing manual labor, hauling plastics around town basically. He had a break and found a tech support job. Progressed to level 1 then 2, then he started working (pre-COVID) as a sys admin. During COVID, he changed his job once to also sys admin, and just recently, he managed to land a DevOps job. He's now working with new people, new technologies, new infrastructures, new everything, and is praised for his onboarding speed; which I can attest to.

Why did I write this entire story? I think it's about people more than institutional knowledge. I know my friend is smart and driven, and no matter what you'll throw at him, he'll somehow find a way to adapt and improve. There's also an argument against stale institutional knowledge. Ultimately, I think being agile as a company is a greater advantage than institutional knowledge, so I'm biased.

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

#963

Post by craigie » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 5:49 PM UTC

Forgeties79 wrote: post #935

passivate wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is a job just an exchange of labor for payment? I view it as so much more. Even if we look at it from a job perspective, its also an opportunity to build personal connections between team members; "I owe you one" - goes a long way. Yes you can absolutely build these personal connections online, and it may be easier for introverted people, but I would say for most people a handshake or a smile passing down the hal…

My friend, 95% of my coworkers have very little understanding what I do to the point where I could ghost for a week and there’d be probably 80% chance no one would be the wiser. Lots of jobs are like that. Deadline are generally floating, a project can take 30min or 30 days, and micromanaging doesn’t help much if at all. I keep track of what I’m doing on GitHub, make sure my backups are good, and do my thing. They do…

No post body was provided.

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

#964

Post by i_love_music » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 5:52 PM UTC

brutus1213 wrote: post #189

paxys wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both engineers and managers at big tech companies can get by working 2 hours a day. And remote vs on-site doesn't affect that. This has been true since well before WFH. As for the location-based pay part, I bet none of the people who were furious about getting "adjusted" after moving out of the Bay Area ever complained about their colleagues in Bangalore working the same amount as them and making 1/5 as much.

I get a bit annoyed hearing about the 2 hour a day folks. They are probably forcing their peers or managers to take on more work than is their fair share. I'm in management now .. as an engineer, I most certainly used to work over 8 hours a day (probably 12 hours, counting all the time I spent studying to keep up). Now, in management, the hours have actually gone up .. I now have to worry about things my team is doin…

I will say it. FANG/MANG is as easy as it gets. These companies hire people so their competitors don't, not that the people hired are expected to generate tons and tons of value. It is easy to put these companies on a pedestal, but the more you look into it the more you learn that these companies are HUGE and that finding a team that only requires you to work 2 hours a day is pretty normal. This at least has been my experience and the experience of many friends as senior+ in FANGMA

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

#965

Post by johnnyanmac » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 5:54 PM UTC

sixstringtheory wrote: post #136

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…

> disappear for days at a time, miss meetings for weeks at a time How is this not an immediately fireable offense? At least at the point of reestablishing contact where a doctor’s note or equivalent excuse can’t be furnished…

seriously. If I'm not even messaging a manager for over 24 hours to say hi, it better be because I got hit by a bus and am in a coma. Participation is the bare bones minimum if someone is paying you to do work.

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

#966

Post by craigie » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 5:58 PM UTC

namelosw wrote: post #445

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…

It's not proven but we'll get there. There's virtually impossible to refactor big corporations into real remote organizations - they're "remote bolt-on". For them, to remote is only to cope with COVID, other than that it's mostly a liability. We probably need to wait for another half-decade to see it unfold - to see if there could be any "remote native" company that can disrupt the market and challenge big corporatio…

I suspect what the VCs say will have an impact too.

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

#967

Post by craigie » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 6:04 PM UTC

Consultant32452 wrote: post #569

alecbz wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remote and in-office are both pretty inherently social decisions. If you're remote, you don't want to be left out if other team members are in person. If you're in-office, most of the benefits depend on other people also being in-office.

I'll be frank. I don't want to be forced to socialize with coworkers. They need to make friends outside of work if they need socialization time. I may socialize with people from work, but will do it on my own terms. The collaboration thing is almost never really about collaborating or efficiency, it's just the polite way of saying they want to force others to fulfill their social needs.

I don't get why in person types camt just use a co-working facility. Obviously not an option during the pandemic and that was rough gor them but so was going to the office for years for everyone else.

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

#968

Post by gameman144 » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 6:05 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #639

randomsilence wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which will lead to the remote workers changing companies. If there is no substantial advantage, those companies will become second class companies.

Just like how racial discrimination leads to worse outcomes yet FAANG is 99% White/Asian? Especially at higher levels.

So looking at the numbers, it seems that Asians are over-represented across most tech companies, and most/all other groups are underrepresented (https://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/divers...).

I'm curious, though, why that would make you think that racial discrimination is happening? It could just as easily mean that racial discrimination is not happening and that Asian candidates are equally over-represented in the underlying qualifications (e.g. university degrees, prior experience -- both of which are indeed the case).

Also, at a level removed from tech, what criteria do you use to determine whether some system which does not equally represent the general population is discriminatory or not? It seems like the numbers alone here aren't sufficient, but I reckon you've probably given this a lot of thought, so I'd love to hear your mental model there.

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

#969

Post by throwaway675309 » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 6:12 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…

Just for reference, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has largely been discredited.

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

#970

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 6:15 PM UTC

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #853

com2kid wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

As a opposite view: Some team members output has severely dropped. I've seen people playing video games during work hours for example. Also work and free time has mixed to a point where people just randomly take hour or two to go skiing or for a walk and routinely just quit at the normal time. Commuting is different in different places. For me it is 15 minute drive to the office from a neighboring smaller city where…

[deleted]