111–120 of 296 posts
Google has been shedding office space in the bay. They probably don’t currently have enough desks, and they don’t feel like spending on the office space. They’ve also been aggressively moving teams overseas. My guess is they won’t RTO, or at least not until their headcount matches desk count in core regions.
They say this now. But in 12 months (or the next layoff period), they will move from hybrid to full RTO. Still a shitty move to mandate RTO. Most people (IT folks) have spoke with do this routine: 0) daily routine to prepare for day 1) 1 hr commute to shitty office 2) login to computer, do calls with cross regional (and international) teams over Zoom/Teams/Webex or whatever conferencing system 3) teleconferencing wit…
There’s a ton of fraud in this space. You need at least hybrid to keep that at bay. At a previous place, we chose hybrid RTO over intrusive surveillance. My opinion shifted from being a full remote advocate after I caught a half dozen folks with various schemes and scams. The straw that broke the camels back was a guy who lied about where he was living. He was going through a divorce and the ex-wife ratted him out to…
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RTO for sales folks doesn't make sense to me either. Typically you want your sales folks on the road not in your office. I think sales is a good candidate for fully remote.
Amazon is not mandating RTO for sales folks.
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And if you find out that your developers were actually in North Korea and you've violated sanctions, would you care then? https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-disrupts-n...
So the logic is that even though they may get their required work done, the risk that they may one day flee to North Korea and cause you to violate sanctions requires that you have to constantly bring in all of your employees to a central location and soft surveil them to mitigate this? Why not just require a single background check or interview them on-site?
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IMO the downside of being that spread out is the infrastructure. Cities subsidize the suburban infrastructure because of the population density benefits. If everyone spreads out then infrastructure will suffer.
Do cities actually subsidize suburban infrastructure? I am skeptical but I don’t know all of the details on how people come to that conclusion. What happens if the economy is more spread out? Also a lot of the people that own and run companies that give a city its tax base live in the suburban areas. It might even be reasonable to say that they are the ones subsidizing the city and not the other way. How do you think…
They work because they are mostly newish. Core functions like keeping roads functional rely on state and federal aid.
Many older suburbs are more in decline now. Especially in 2nd/3rd tier metro areas. It’s just less obvious than the inner city or rural areas. They need growth to thrive. Once they fill out, population ages out, schools decline, and a vicious cycle starts.
Money policy has kept that going by organizing the economy around real estate. I don’t think it’s sustainable to continually recapitalize single family homes.
I know multiple people who worked at Amazon (I say worked because they've recently quit) who would log two of their three weekly badges by going in the office at 11:59pm, and again at 12:01 am. Their team, managers, and collaborators never actually expected them at their desks. It was all to appease this mandate. It's not surprising that Amazon has moved to 5 days a week despite so many people gaming the system and n…
I honestly don't think there is any algorithm. For all the bluster and commitment to being "data driven", none of the companies I've seen mandate RTO have provided any sort of data-driven reason why it needs to happen. Amazon's policy might as well be "Jassy feels it in his gut that RTO is better for the company so we are doing it". All the communication of RTO invokes the most fanciful and vague references to "magic…
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Same! Tech job, my co-founder and I are only a 5 minute drive or bike ride from the office. It’s nice to get dressed and have that separation from home. I feel like the commute is what people are actually feeling the worst, because it’s unpaid time that they just straight up lose. Being close to the office resolves it for us.
I don't have the discipline to stop working when I work from home. Being able to go into the office every day is a nice perk for me to help structure my day. If it was a longer drive, I'd probably feel differently.
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A lot of business don't want to bother performance managing that closely. Plenty just worked off of trust. * You hire someone, and then figure out someone else is doing the work (usually because they are making stupid mistakes, and the person you hired can't be that dumb) * Your staff work odd hours that make coordinating hard (side gigs / hussle's etc). * I think the rumored record of multiple full time jobs someone…
> * I think the rumored record of multiple full time jobs someone was working was 5+. > * We interviewed someone who was upfront they would be working for us while working for her full time day job remotely. I'm not sure how this is justified as a problem. CEO of multiple companies: A-OK SVP serving on multiple companies' boards of directors: A-OK Salaried office worker working for multiple companies remotely: Fraud…
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So the logic is that even though they may get their required work done, the risk that they may one day flee to North Korea and cause you to violate sanctions requires that you have to constantly bring in all of your employees to a central location and soft surveil them to mitigate this? Why not just require a single background check or interview them on-site?
I was responding to someone that says they only care that they deliver. And that was the statement I took issue with, there are numerous factors that employer should care about beyond performance. As another example, the liability raised from creating a toxic workplace. I said nothing about bringing people in. You raise two things that would be good controls for identity fraud.
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>13 hours of work... ... what?
13 hours of (work + commute) -- that's 5 hours of commute + 8 hours of work.