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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

#201

Post by wepple »

grepfru_it wrote: post #125
ryandrake wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk didn’t prove anything. All he showed so far is that if you turn off the airplane engine mid-flight, it will glide for a time on momentum.

Still waiting for all the major failures people have been clamoring about. I think the real talk is that you can run a lot of dotcoms on a skeleton crew and when money becomes tight you can trim a lot of fat. It’s not something people like to hear because they realize they are the fat

Perhaps that’s me, the fat? If I were let go tomorrow there wouldn’t be any negative consequences for probably at least a year.

I do security things, and it seems those folks are all gone from Twitter.

But my hypothesis is that the negatives won’t emerge for some time, at which point something bad happens and everyone will be standing around shaking their heads at how negligent it was.

Although more generally I do sympathize with the idea that most tech companies are at least a little bloated because money has so often been cheap & revenues always go up historically

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

#202

Post by defrost »

simonswords82 wrote: post #196
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?

On a large tech campus you might expect

* Cameras recording faces near badge swipe points, and | or

* Campus wide mobile phone services that also log SIM cards and other locale data.

You can imagine some data analyst being tasked with trawling logs to look for inconsistancies.

There are, of course, other meta data logs and sources that could be used.

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

#203

Post by rqtwteye »

Before they push for RTO “because collaboration “,they should make sure that everybody works in similar time zones. For me the real killer of collaboration is to work with with people who live in California, India and China on the same project. If you aren’t willing to sacrifice your personal life and talk to them at night, there is almost no collaboration possible. Being in the office doesn’t help at all there.

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

#204

Post by wildrhythms »

sulam wrote: post #105
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.

This is not true. My understanding was that some 'office regions' are paid less than remote workers in the same state. https://archive.is/FQsXB

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

#205

Post by tyingq »

complex_exp wrote: post #9
quantum_state wrote: post #7

This is yet another sign that Google is in ruin …

It's hardly in ruin, has more cash on the balance sheet than, for example, all the help sent to Ukraine, military and humanitarian. It's just that making a shit ton of money ain't actually that fun because your job is basically to constantly patch holes in this gargantuan ship that never stops.

"In ruin" is probably too strong. But, there are lots of expectations that double-digit YoY revenue growth will continue forever. Growth that far exceeds audience growth. That's mostly from ads, and now the most lucrative queries have nothing but ads above the fold...videos are fully saturated with ads, better targeting is constrained by various privacy laws, Apple, etc. So that expectation cannot be met for much longer. They have squeezed all the easy juice. Growth will continue, but at a much lower rate that more closely matches audience growth.

So, "in ruin" may not be right, but there is some kind of big shift coming. The conditions they've enjoyed for a long time aren't going to hold.

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

#207

Post by bryanrasmussen »

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…

There are more conditions that pertain

Remote Work is better if

1. You do not have home problems that you will end up focusing on when you are there - so if you are single and do not own your home, or you have a great relationship and you do own your home but there are no problems the remote work is probably better. But just like being in an office and going into a private room can help productivity if you have problems with home life going to office to work can help with productivity.

2. Remote work is much better if you are a person who is motivated by love of what you are doing and you actually love what you are doing, if you start to not love what you are doing but you have not left the company yet etc. there can be some slight loss of productivity, not because intentionally goofing off so much but because like #1 above working remotely makes it harder to get focused on something one does for money and not love if you are a love focused worker.

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

#208

Post by wildrhythms »

saagarjha wrote: post #119
tdeck wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only trying, but largely succeeding. I haven't seen one instance where these decisions have been reversed due to pushback.

That’s because people just leave.

What happens when all the other companies are implementing the same policy...

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

#209

Post by simonswords82 »

wildrhythms wrote: post #198
simonswords82 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nobody said it was outside of working hours.

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

#210

Post by rco8786 »

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…

That description of Meta sounds like a high level of disfunction that has nothing to do with remote or in person.
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