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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

#301

Post by MichaelRo »

LiquidSky wrote: post #264
rubicon33 wrote: post #253

Worked from home ~5 of my ~10 years in development. Obviously, the "pros" of WFH are massive. No commute. Comfortable office. Food in the fridge. Daytime exercise + showers. Etc. etc. I found however that too much of a good thing, is bad. For me, the lack of in person communication started to atrophy my enjoyment of life. I wouldn't have been able to really tell you it for the first few years, but I was slowly moving…

>For me, the lack of in person communication started to atrophy my enjoyment of life. I would suggest that it's possible to interact with people outside of work. It's genuinely sad to me how many of these "if I don't go into the office I have no one to interact with" posts I see.

Yeah, it's super-weird for me too.

I have a circle of friends and a habit that we keep since 20+ years: every Friday morning we meet for a coffee in a physical coffee shop. Location varied along time, I lived as close as 2 minutes walk from my apartment to (now) 1 hour drive (because of the traffic).

It's not a religious thing, people miss meetings. Got other stuff, or just not being in the mood (like I drank till 2 AM, no way I'm waking up at 6 so I can be out the door at 7 so I'll be in the coffee shop at 8, stay an hour then back home). But the habit has stuck and we kept our friendship. Some people have left the group (one died), others joined it. It's easy to expand a group once you have a stable kernel: just go out for some coffees at day or drinks at night and talk to people.

I get along well with work colleagues as well, mostly I'm asking the question: if I leave this company, will I be ever talking to these guys ever again? If the answer is yes (stay in touch through WhatsApp and the occasional beer in a bar) then they're more than acquaintances and useful connections in case I need a job. Like recently got laid out (whole office closed, some 200 people fired), found a new job in less than a week. Connections, people.

So office has some value but it's far from being "the whole world".

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

#302

Post by nico »

llm_nerd wrote: post #259
rubicon33 wrote: post #253

Worked from home ~5 of my ~10 years in development. Obviously, the "pros" of WFH are massive. No commute. Comfortable office. Food in the fridge. Daytime exercise + showers. Etc. etc. I found however that too much of a good thing, is bad. For me, the lack of in person communication started to atrophy my enjoyment of life. I wouldn't have been able to really tell you it for the first few years, but I was slowly moving…

The obvious counterpoint is that many people were and are miserable commuting into a workplace and then putting in the grind. It's actually humorous that most tech "social media" like HN, Reddit, Digg, and so on were much busier back when most of us were in offices, because we all would bide our days doing anything but work. You could see the bursts as the primary demographic timezones started their "work" days. Not…

> changed some element of their life and This Changes Everything...at least during the initial period. Then it fades and they abandon it

This is basically the essence of life

It’s sometimes called Hedonistic Adaptation

And it’s also almost the same concept as the endless arising and passing, the source of “suffering”, in many eastern spiritual traditions

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

#303

Post by snarf21 »

LiquidSky wrote: post #264
rubicon33 wrote: post #253

Worked from home ~5 of my ~10 years in development. Obviously, the "pros" of WFH are massive. No commute. Comfortable office. Food in the fridge. Daytime exercise + showers. Etc. etc. I found however that too much of a good thing, is bad. For me, the lack of in person communication started to atrophy my enjoyment of life. I wouldn't have been able to really tell you it for the first few years, but I was slowly moving…

>For me, the lack of in person communication started to atrophy my enjoyment of life. I would suggest that it's possible to interact with people outside of work. It's genuinely sad to me how many of these "if I don't go into the office I have no one to interact with" posts I see.

While true, I think you are missing the time commitment and the relationships. Once the kids get home and you have dinner and soccer and karate and chores, a lot of people don't have time to squeeze in "find friends" time. Additionally, they may want to spend that limited time with their kids. Work interactions are free from a time commitment and that may be the best chance for some people to have adult interaction.

When you go into the office, you can build quite a history with people over time. I have good friends that I've worked with (off and on) for over 25 years. And we are not just "work friends". I've also felt much a part of a "team" working in person than wfh and those connections and trust can manifest in the work too.

I think that we need to continue to acknowledge that this is a human preference. And we all have quite different history, goals and situations.

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

#304

Post by saganus »

tpmoney wrote: post #236
whoisthemachine wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#1 can be solved by renting a co-working space if troubles at home are really that severe. I doubt that #2 is really any different than if you are unmotivated while in the office. If anything, one unmotivated employee in the office can more easily spread that lack of motivation to their co-workers.

Why would you spend your own money renting office space somewhere and commuting there when you have a perfectly good office your company will pay for?

Because your rented coworking space could be closer to home for instance

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

#305

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

LiquidSky wrote: post #264
rubicon33 wrote: post #253

Worked from home ~5 of my ~10 years in development. Obviously, the "pros" of WFH are massive. No commute. Comfortable office. Food in the fridge. Daytime exercise + showers. Etc. etc. I found however that too much of a good thing, is bad. For me, the lack of in person communication started to atrophy my enjoyment of life. I wouldn't have been able to really tell you it for the first few years, but I was slowly moving…

>For me, the lack of in person communication started to atrophy my enjoyment of life. I would suggest that it's possible to interact with people outside of work. It's genuinely sad to me how many of these "if I don't go into the office I have no one to interact with" posts I see.

That’s not how I read it. I have a fine social life outside work, but when my wife heads out every morning and I’m alone from roughly 8-6 every weekday, I feel exactly how that comment described.

It’s not that I don’t see friends and family outside those hours, it’s just that those hours constitute like half of the awake hours of my life, and the grind sucks when I do it alone.

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

#306

Post by masto »

fhd2 wrote: post #124

Quick search on this thread didn't reveal the word "flame" (as in "flame war"), so I can´t resist: That's what the remote vs on-site debate is. About as interesting and ultimately inconclusive as Emacs vs Vi. Neither is universally better. It depends, _primarily_ on the people involved and their preferences. My advice would be to try and work with people that are on the same page about this with you - if possible. If…

Your analysis is spot-on. Almost all of the other comments here are "I want X, so X is better. If you prefer Y, you're wrong and stupid."

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

#307

Post by pfannkuchen »

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #283
pfannkuchen wrote: post #257

I wonder if all of the WFH excitement would have happened if open offices had never become widespread and we all had an actual office with a door. It’s kind of funny that they’ve made offices so bad that no one wants to go there, but no one (on the corporate side) talks about improving the working environment in the office at all in the context of WFO.

They've tried and were met with all kinds of retorts. It's more difficult to get an employer to spend an extra 50/month on your equipment, than to piss 10x of it away in inefficient code run on cloud computing. WFH at least got a foothold, most individuals don't even know what it is like to work in an area tailormade to your way of working.

Yeah I’m referring to e.g. Google the company, not its employees. It’s amazing that companies pretend the modern office environment is a reasonable place to work. IMO office with closed door is much better than WFH, you’d think someone would start offering it again. Is it really that prohibitively expensive?

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

#308

Post by zingababba »

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…

Probably the best distinction I have seen tbh...

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

#309

Post by ghaff »

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #293
ghaff wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seniority is another factor. People who have been in the industry and with a company for a long time largely have a network and don't really have problems connecting with people. (And at larger companies that network is often pretty distributed anyway.) But the--admittedly not universal--consensus is that new folks struggle with onboarding and generally making progress in their careers. And even coming into an office…

A lot of that struggle has to do with what others point out already: the onboarding processes and documentation being of shoddy quality and relying on word-of-mouth to transfer knowledge and repeatedly check in. If you start raising future generations to be, you know, adults, instead of mentally stunting them into being eternal teens well into their 30s, and companies make an effort not to have a horrible onboarding…

It's hard to argue with better documentation and process. However, if I think back to my early time in the computer industry (admittedly with much more limited electronic communications and other tools), it's just really hard for me to visualize taking away the in-person face-to-face--including a lot of social and quasi-social activities.

And with many travel budgets so squeezed at the moment (and COVID of course), you have teams with people who have never met anyone else on their team in-person in their whole multiyear tenure with the company. And to your point about short tenures, maybe they never will. If I'm honest, even though I've been around for ages, I'm less connected with co-workers than I've been in the past.

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

#310

Post by kartoshechka »

ghaff wrote: post #287
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…

Seniority is another factor. People who have been in the industry and with a company for a long time largely have a network and don't really have problems connecting with people. (And at larger companies that network is often pretty distributed anyway.) But the--admittedly not universal--consensus is that new folks struggle with onboarding and generally making progress in their careers. And even coming into an office…

I graduated from uni and all my jobs were 100% remote, and I don't really feel I had any serious problems in onboarding or advancing in my career at least yet :)

I'm not gonna pretend that every project had 100% coverage and up-to-date documentation, but you should overcome fear of appearing weak/dumb and just ask a question, not even waiting for the next daily meetup. If culture is good enough, people are gonna realize it isn't you dumb, but docs and processes suck ass and will do something about it, maybe even asking you to participate. If not, just leave when the next offer lines up, I did that once when people straight up refused answering to my questions directly, and instead nagging that I didn't ask them properly.

Building up network is obviously more reliable when meeting in person, but it doesn't defeat the idea of getting to know each other through daily interactions, retros, 1-1s, whatever. And moreover if you appear professional and capable in eyes of colleagues by getting shit done, they're would want at least keep in touch

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