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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

#191

Post by kcatskcolbdi »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #184
tomp wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ’s so much easier to be sitting next to someone, pointing at their monitor, and discussing what and why you are doing something. Instead, you need to hop on a call and awkwardly screen share on a call or write out paragraphs of text to impart the knowledge For me, it's the exact opposite. Before the pandemic, I always found the practice (and even the idea!) of "pairing" quite off-putting. You're standing behind som…

Normal people get showers and wear deodorant dude. How do you feel about sitting next to someone at a bar?

I'm struggling to identify how it's not glaringly self-evident that the person you're replying to would not enjoy sitting next to people at bars.

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

#192

Post by euiq »

The title is essentially clickbait. From the article:

> Google is the latest company to tighten its return-to-work policies to get workers to commute more often. In an internal email, the company said it could make office attendance an element of an employee’s performance review if they did not comply with the three-day minimum for in-office work, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Why, yes: if you don't come to the office as often as your employer wants you to, you'll get in trouble.

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

#193

Post by marcinzm »

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…

Is your average company made of some of the most brilliant and driven and experienced people in the world in their fields? Do they have no actual business goals but a wide open field to just do something big and different and impactful? If so then literally nothing else matters except not getting in their way. But there's very few cases like this.

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

#194

Post by simonswords82 »

ekianjo wrote: post #186
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. Really? what does it bring that you can't do remotely? I can hardly think of a problem where "being in the same room" is a requirement to have a productive discussion

I'm pro work from anywhere so long as shit gets done but...

Picking up on social cues. Bouncing ideas around using a whiteboard. Speaking quickly without that ever so slight lag on Zoom which means you struggle to get a word in without potentially talking over somebody. Having food or drinks before or afterwards to unwind and build relationships and kick things around informally.

There's lots more.

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

#195

Post by wepple »

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…

> 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?

Stating that it’s possible is very different to stating which model might be more effective or faster.

Unfortunately we don’t have a parallel universe where torvalds lived on the same street as a bunch of other collaborators to compare

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

#196

Post by simonswords82 »

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.

So glad you mentioned committing badge swiping fraud.

I was going to ask on an original thread, what is to stop people simply swiping other people in on their badge to pretend that they're in the office more than they actually are?

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

#197

Post by wildrhythms »

ekianjo wrote: post #186
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. Really? what does it bring that you can't do remotely? I can hardly think of a problem where "being in the same room" is a requirement to have a productive discussion

+1 every time we have these in-person sprints they are dominated by the managerial types trying to make the engineers and designers engage in trite 'activities' they read about online or in some book. And even when the result of the sprint is one poorly thought out doomed to fail concept, the managerial types parade around their ability to run a sprint, the outcome of the thing not really relevant at that point.

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

#198

Post by wildrhythms »

simonswords82 wrote: post #194
ekianjo wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It might be useful to "all be in the room" when brainstorming. Really? what does it bring that you can't do remotely? I can hardly think of a problem where "being in the same room" is a requirement to have a productive discussion

I'm pro work from anywhere so long as shit gets done but... Picking up on social cues. Bouncing ideas around using a whiteboard. Speaking quickly without that ever so slight lag on Zoom which means you struggle to get a word in without potentially talking over somebody. Having food or drinks before or afterwards to unwind and build relationships and kick things around informally. There's lots more.

Maybe it's just me but I don't really want to think about work outside of working hours, much less hang out or 'unwind' with my coworkers before or after work.

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

#199

Post by tomp »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #184
tomp wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ’s so much easier to be sitting next to someone, pointing at their monitor, and discussing what and why you are doing something. Instead, you need to hop on a call and awkwardly screen share on a call or write out paragraphs of text to impart the knowledge For me, it's the exact opposite. Before the pandemic, I always found the practice (and even the idea!) of "pairing" quite off-putting. You're standing behind som…

Normal people get showers and wear deodorant dude. How do you feel about sitting next to someone at a bar?

I'm guessing you've never actually spent 8 hours or so in a stuffy office doing hard/stressful work with people who also take walks (e.g. to go get lunch and get back to the office in 30 allotted minutes).

Also some people wear too much deodorant.

I agree, none of this is an issue if working with clean, civilised people... a few feet away. It can quickly become uncomfortable if you're too close to each other.

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

#200

Post by marcinzm »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #27
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'm curious if you've considered that there is a pretty major cost difference between the two options? (at least for the company) Would you conclude that In Person is much better , in excess of the additional costs ?

The cost difference is probably rather small. CoWorking spaces in large cities charge something like $500/desk/month which we can assume is a reasonable cost of office space. That comes out to $6k/year/employee. Google's median employee pay is around $300k so we're talking a 2% difference in cost.
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