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

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

#151

Post by onion2k »

chii wrote: post #135
onion2k wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not calling any of them solo productions. Linux and the internet were both massively collaborative projects built by many people who met up maybe once or twice a year, and certainly not all of them at once ever. They were globally distributed. Being in an office together was not necessary for the success of those things, which were some of the hardest technical research projects ever, so I'm questioning if people really need to be in-person to make YouTube or GMail.

(I don't know the history of git, maybe that too though.)

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

#152

Post by extr »

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 was a Data Scientist. Personally I found the autonomy immensely frustrating. Combined with the stack ranking performance review system, it was effectively a way of pushing the manager's job on to the employee and forcing them to hold themselves accountable for their own priorities. Makes sense in theory, but once you add huge organization churn + being remote, it was difficult to get a sense of what priorities were exactly, or would be next month. It made me feel insecure at all times that perhaps I was working on the wrong thing and would be punished for it.

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

#153

Post by extr »

chambers wrote: post #88
extr wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Research is ideal for remote work, since you are effectively your own manager and by definition there is no specific vision that needs to be worked toward - you are discovering that vision yourself. It's the literal ivory tower. In my experience if you give non-R&D engineers and small teams total autonomy they will all end up building great solutions to problems that are slightly different than the problem y…

Do you write a blog? Your experience resonates with mine.

No, but maybe I should start one.

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

#154

Post by eecc »

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…

> You had to go 5-6 layers up the reporting chain to find anyone with any sort of holistic sense of what needed to be done, and they were not exactly empowered to share that vision lest it conflict with someone elses.

OTOH, from personal experience working on-site hasn't really ever helped particularly well in that scenario (which I'mm all too familiar with.)

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

#155

Post by rob74 »

gniv wrote: post #140
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. "Co…

The problem is just that there are some people who are able to concentrate while lots of other people are having lots of non-related conversations around them in a cafeteria (sounds like this might be you), while others can't. And the latter will prefer home office to a cafeteria or even to the usual open-plan office...

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

#156

Post by datadeft »

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…

I totally agree.

I used to work for Amzn and the management was totally idiotic about remote work. We had to go to the office to be on call for datacenters 1000kms from the office. Makes perfect sense right?

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

#157

Post by laurentlb »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #111

Sounds like Google is eliminating remote work. Has VP Urs Holzle returned from New Zealand? https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/google-exec-remote-work-wfh...

No, remote work is still allowed. It might be a bit more difficult to switch to a remote work contract now (but still possible), but people who are already remote will continue like this.

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

#159

Post by vineyardmike »

blitzar wrote: post #130
angarg12 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I love the fantasy that some management hold that back in my day you couldn't slack in the office and it was a thing that was invented on the first day someone "worked from home". Over a few drinks they will also tell you stories of the old days where you would leave your jacket on the back of your chair and go to the pub at 11am come back to the office at some point in the afternoon. But kidz these days...

> you would leave your jacket on the back of your chair and go to the pub at 11am

I’ve talked to junior employees (in 2023) for non-tech companies and you’d think they work for Amazon warehouses - I’ve heard people say they get criticized or called out for spending a long time in the bathroom “probably on social media”. So there’s probably some cohort of people that truly experience that level of oversight.

I don’t know about going to the Pub at 11, but I’ve definitely seen plenty of ways to slack off in person. My manager was buying a new laptop last month and spent 4+ hours measuring random books and objects trying to get an idea of the dimensions of his future laptop… as if he didn’t already spend the day at the Apple Store and didn’t already place the order.

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

#160

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

heavyset_go wrote: post #99
mylons wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's almost like there should be a union or something

I was told developers had enough leverage without unions to prevent this from happening /s

When the market goes up, devs don't want to hear about unions because that would prevent them from jumping ship with a 50% raise. When the market goes down, they want a union to protect them from being fired from that +50% job they got knowing they would be paid much less in the current economy.

The dev logic is "fuck you I've got mine, you go get yours" but only as long as "line goes up".

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