Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

fortune.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 366 posts

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

#131

Post by onion2k »

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..

Can you explain how some of the greatest technical research projects of our time like the internet, Linux, etc happened without a big office then?

It's clearly nonsense to suggest you have to be collaborating in-person to build big unknown things. There are thousands of examples throughout open source and more where that hasn't been the case, and millions of examples of projects from company offices that are awful.

The physical geography of the team is not an indicator of success.

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

#132

Post by blitzar »

photonbucket wrote: post #89
karmasimida wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that so? WFH is still a largely a COVID thing, even 3 times a day is still better than going to office 5 times week, as before?

3 times a week in way worse than zero. Are we all going to just drive somewhere, sit at a desk and not talk to our co-workers cause they actually in some other office, then drive home?

Are we all going to just drive somewhere, sit at a desk and have a zoom call with our co-workers that are working from home that day, then drive home?

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

#133

Post by blitzar »

MathMonkeyMan wrote: post #25
skirmish wrote: post #5

Heard on Blind: soon HR will be calling engineer parents about missed days in office: "your son is smart, he is just not applying himself".

All of his school work is top notch and delivered on time. He's helpful and kind to his classmates. I'm just not getting a strong senior signal for him. Perhaps it's a behavioral issue?

We think he has weak senior signal, we want to put him on these powerful stimulants to boost his senior signal receptors*

* side effects may include mild psycopathy

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

#134

Post by ttul »

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 experience leading an older startup is that category two is hard to escape whether or not you’re working in person. It has more to do with the “Innovator’s Dilemma” - once a company has found product market fit and is generating profits, everything is fine-tuned for that purpose. The company’s reason for existing is to generate profits from that one thing that really worked out.

Some companies are able to add great new products over time, but I sense that it’s more common for companies to have one great play, after which they either die or merge with another to enjoy better economies of scale.

If you’re big enough and rich enough, you tend to burn a ton of money on internal research groups, but very little of what gets researched is ever a successful product. Doing this as a smaller organization is nearly impossible, which is why I think so many startups just exit rather than finding entirely new things to build.

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

#135

Post by chii »

onion2k wrote: post #131
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.. Can you explain how some of the greatest technical research projects of our time like the internet, Linux, etc happened without a big office then? It's clearly nonsense to suggest you have to be collaborating in-person to build big unknown things. There are thousands of examples throughout open source and more where that hasn't been the case, and mil…

> ...etc happened without a big office

while linux or git was created relatively sololy by a single person (at least at the beginning), i dont think you can call the internet a solo production.

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

#136

Post by _8j50 »

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…

Office work is nice for teams that actually benefit from open area desk layout. Teams that can work fine in cubicles and offices do great WFH.

For me, the extroverts that insist in socializing, gossiping and politicking in person make office work an unproductive nightmare.

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

#137

Post by meinheld111 »

suzzer99 wrote: post #110
q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 oste…

You seem to be doing something right. Imo most ppl are overworked and underpaid

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

#138

Post by [deleted] »

bezier-curve wrote: post #47
somsak2 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> PM at google > couldn't afford living in SF

Seriously though, it's a major city with too much single unit family housing. The fact tech exists there is more of an anomaly at this point, our democracy continues to fail us.

[deleted]

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

#139

Post by almost_usual »

somsak2 wrote: post #21
gunshai wrote: post #16

A friend of mine who is a PM at google was telling me about this the other week. Her job situation sounded so tenuous, in that a lot of it hinged on how cool her manager was with her living situation not being in SF. Also having to ask a friend to swipe her badge because she couldn't afford living in SF.

> PM at google > couldn't afford living in SF

They can afford to live in SF, they can’t afford the lifestyle they want.

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

#140

Post by gniv »

jleyank wrote: post #3

It might be useful to "all be in the room" when brainstorming. Once the coding starts, this is just a set of distractions I don't need. I suspect many/most of the developers reading HN want peace and quiet far more than the chance of magical hallway conversations. And it's only an anecdote, but we debugged a problem today where people were in two provinces of Canada and the UK. Were perfectly able to share screens, r…

> It might be useful to "all be in the room" when brainstorming. Once the coding starts, this is just a set of distractions I don't need.

This is not the dichotomy you make it look. There are lots of other tasks to do, and for those I personally would often go in a cafeteria or public space, since I didn't mind the distractions -- reading code, doing code reviews, reading docs, writing docs, responding to emails. "Coding" was a relatively small part of my day as a SWE at [FAANG].

Post reply on HN