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Google uses in-person office attendance as part of employee performance reviews

fortune.com

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Re: Google uses in-person office attendance as part of employee performance reviews

#101

Post by Foobar8568 »

sidlls wrote: post #93
HWR_14 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never cease to be amazed at the extent to which knowledge workers want to make "replace us with Eastern Europeans/Latin Americans/Indians" as painless a drop in as possible.

This has been an ongoing issue in tech for at least two decades now. The workers in these places are generally not as skilled at software development. Their countrymen who are quite skilled have, to a large degree, moved to the US for work. My in-office coworkers from India, for example, have for the most part been at least as good as those from anywhere else including native US citizens. Those who have worked off-sh…

Negatively productivity? We are teaching our supplier how their SaaS product, magic quadrant leader, is working ffs.

Re: Google uses in-person office attendance as part of employee performance reviews

#102

Post by loarabia »

q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote: post #98
extr wrote: post #20

After going back and forth between in-person and remote jobs, my conclusion: * Remote work is much better if you know what you're building and "just" need to execute. * In-person is much better if you don't know what you need to build, are trying to "figure it out as you go along", and are relying on the implicit fast feedback loop of standing next to each other. Obvious, right? But I think what I've realize is the d…

> My instructions when I joined were something like "Yeah so just talk to a bunch of people and look for opportunities to contribute". Do you mind sharing the job title for something like this? Sounds like a dream job.

Currently I’m a GTPM at Meta and this is the expectation we have for onboarding to a new team unless you’re early in career. I’ve seen this be the case for SWE and other roles in the technical domain. Typically you have an expertise area and at least on my team a starter project or 2 with a tangible deliverable to get you going on something while you ramp and meet others and figure things out. Meta is a big place though so could be other expectations in other organizations.

Re: Google uses in-person office attendance as part of employee performance reviews

#103

Post by jedberg »

extr wrote: post #20

After going back and forth between in-person and remote jobs, my conclusion: * Remote work is much better if you know what you're building and "just" need to execute. * In-person is much better if you don't know what you need to build, are trying to "figure it out as you go along", and are relying on the implicit fast feedback loop of standing next to each other. Obvious, right? But I think what I've realize is the d…

In person makes no sense for any FAANG, because they are geographically distributed. All you do is come into the office to sit on video calls all day with people in other locations, unless you're at a very low level and your influence is very limited to just your team.

Re: Google uses in-person office attendance as part of employee performance reviews

#104

Post by angarg12 »

extr wrote: post #20

After going back and forth between in-person and remote jobs, my conclusion: * Remote work is much better if you know what you're building and "just" need to execute. * In-person is much better if you don't know what you need to build, are trying to "figure it out as you go along", and are relying on the implicit fast feedback loop of standing next to each other. Obvious, right? But I think what I've realize is the d…

> * In-person is much better if you don't know what you need to build, are trying to "figure it out as you go along", and are relying on the implicit fast feedback loop of standing next to each other.

My anecdotal evidence is different.

I've spent the last 2 years building a large, complex, and ambiguous system working almost exclusively remote, and half of it from another continent. For the first year I never met a colleague in person.

However, all this time I have been working closely with another engineer. Both of us are senior and very tenured, got good rapport and were highly aligned and motivated. We were able to execute efficiently, sometimes spending hours huddling in Slack per day.

So my feeling is that remote works in some scenarios and not others, particularly involving new or junior engineers.

Re: Google uses in-person office attendance as part of employee performance reviews

#105

Post by sulam »

batmaniam wrote: post #74

Well nothing can be done about that, Google's trying to force people back and it's gonna do what it's gonna do. Unless people get together an exert their voice. Though an interesting question is whether people who took a pay reduction for remote working "somewhere cheaper" will get an IMMEDIATE bump in salary due to now having to move back to SF? Like if Google is gonna uplift the entire lives of its workers, then it…

Google pays by where you live, as determined by your work location. If people move back, they get a bump assuming they took a cut in the first place.

Re: Google uses in-person office attendance as part of employee performance reviews

#106

Post by angarg12 »

IlPeach wrote: post #97

While I enjoy this whole debate in HN about remote Vs in-person, the point here majority seems to be missing is that the sole attendance is used as a threat for performance review. Effectively a joke. If Google had a problem with people and teams hiding behind a monitor not doing much, I'm sure you can recall a pre-pandemic world where this was also the norm when in the office.

Now that my company has started enforcing RTO, I noticed patterns in some of my colleagues, such as arriving late and leaving early, leaving the laptop in their desk disappearing for a long while, not answering messages for hours with nowhere to be seen, and very vague status updates when asked.

It turns out slackers will slack, be it at home or at the office.

Re: Google uses in-person office attendance as part of employee performance reviews

#107

Post by forgingahead »

extr wrote: post #20

After going back and forth between in-person and remote jobs, my conclusion: * Remote work is much better if you know what you're building and "just" need to execute. * In-person is much better if you don't know what you need to build, are trying to "figure it out as you go along", and are relying on the implicit fast feedback loop of standing next to each other. Obvious, right? But I think what I've realize is the d…

This is a good insight, but the interesting counter-weight to the reality you describe is that many people who want "remote" and the independence of work, don't really want the same "benevolent dictatorship" either.

Re: Google uses in-person office attendance as part of employee performance reviews

#109

Post by [deleted] »

angarg12 wrote: post #106
IlPeach wrote: post #97

While I enjoy this whole debate in HN about remote Vs in-person, the point here majority seems to be missing is that the sole attendance is used as a threat for performance review. Effectively a joke. If Google had a problem with people and teams hiding behind a monitor not doing much, I'm sure you can recall a pre-pandemic world where this was also the norm when in the office.

Now that my company has started enforcing RTO, I noticed patterns in some of my colleagues, such as arriving late and leaving early, leaving the laptop in their desk disappearing for a long while, not answering messages for hours with nowhere to be seen, and very vague status updates when asked. It turns out slackers will slack, be it at home or at the office.

[deleted]

Re: Google uses in-person office attendance as part of employee performance reviews

#110

Post by suzzer99 »

q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote: post #98
extr wrote: post #20

After going back and forth between in-person and remote jobs, my conclusion: * Remote work is much better if you know what you're building and "just" need to execute. * In-person is much better if you don't know what you need to build, are trying to "figure it out as you go along", and are relying on the implicit fast feedback loop of standing next to each other. Obvious, right? But I think what I've realize is the d…

> My instructions when I joined were something like "Yeah so just talk to a bunch of people and look for opportunities to contribute". Do you mind sharing the job title for something like this? Sounds like a dream job.

I transferred within my company to the much bigger company that bought us out and this is basically what my boss told me. Actually his exact words were "you need to create your own job." I hated it. Give me a freaking task, don't make me network and sell myself (remotely of course, no one I worked with was anywhere near me) just for something to do.

I created my own job, just with a startup. For a year I had two ostensibly full time jobs. By the end the startup wasn't doing much either and I considered going for three full time jobs.

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