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Google won't be mandating a strict return-to-office plan

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Re: Google won't be mandating a strict return-to-office plan

#121

Post by bethling »

xyst wrote: post #12

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…

I don't know if that will happen. A lot of the cloud heavy offices moved to shared desks for engineers, so there's only a desk for 2 days/week, so they don't have enough space available for everyone to return full time.

It's still possible, but I don't think would be as easy as an annoucement.

Re: Google won't be mandating a strict return-to-office plan

#122

Post by woooooo »

glzone1 wrote: post #82
scarface_74 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re always locked in to your infrastructure. The entire idea of “cloud agnosticism” is BS. I’ve seen companies take over a year and thousands of man hours to move from VMs on premise to a cloud platform. Cloud agnosticism is hardly ever a business differentiator

It's also not an advantage, I've seen endless complexity in abstractions on abstraction, fragility and giving up really nice cloud features for this. It'd take years to migrate STILL even with all that effort. And they can't ship features they are so busy worrying about AWS going away.

Exception, companies like datadog where they're actually operating in several clouds for good business reasons (it's where their customers are).

Re: Google won't be mandating a strict return-to-office plan

#123

Post by thousand_nights »

fhdsgbbcaA wrote: post #53
Spooky23 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Define “fraud”? If you get your work done in two hours and can’t progress until a teammate does their end, is it better or worse if you are scrolling HN in an office or at home? I run my own company, I do not give a single fuck how, where, or when people get their job done. I only care they deliver. Likewise, people who need to be watched over are not the employees I want in the first place. I’m not running a daycare…

> Define “fraud”?

the BigCorp owns your life, the rights to tell you where to be 75% of your waking hours and what to do.

get the eight hour job done in two hours and slack off for the rest? that's theft and fraud. get it done in two hours and admit to it? that's more work for you for the same pay, to fill the rest of your time.

then you go online and some overly enthusiastic yc sponsored clown will dunk on you for not giving your life away to a corporation

Re: Google won't be mandating a strict return-to-office plan

#124

Post by ein0p »

sbrother wrote: post #25
xyst wrote: post #12

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…

I think the worst part is 9) at night, do more work that requires focus time while no one is bothering you, since expectations got calibrated to when everyone had a private office and more control over their own time.

That’s how it was for me circa 2004-2005. The only way I could get anything real work done was from home, after hours. During the day all we did was sit in meetings and report status to each other and to the higher ups. Worse, then the higher ups decided that we don’t need a sustained engineering team for the past two releases (boxed software) and the team would context switch between building new stuff and patching what’s already out there, 2 releases back. I said fuck it and left.

Re: Google won't be mandating a strict return-to-office plan

#125

Post by papercrane »

sethhochberg wrote: post #26
mushufasa wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have this capability so why not do it? sortof yes, sortof no. Aside from all the conversation about work culture, state taxes are a big barrier to fully remote work. States hate losing tax revenue. Notoriously, it is easier to register to do business in a state than to unregister. This is even harder internationally. For large organizations, remote can be the difference between one state's paperwork + regs + tax…

We see this all the time working at the intersection of the insurance / fintech space. I've had several big, legacy vendors make requests for multiple physical signatures on a piece of paper (printed and mailed or faxed, can't just annotate a PDF) from people who haven't even met eachother in person let alone ever worked at the same address. The kicker? These papers are access authorization forms to APIs. Your averag…

> I've fought similar battles over not being able to provide a direct phone extension because I don't have a phone on my office desk

I'd probably just setup a cheap DID number with someone like VOIP.ms and have it go straight to voicemail.

I agree though, it's not a fight you should have fight. Office phones are going the way of the fax machine.

Re: Google won't be mandating a strict return-to-office plan

#126

Post by Spooky23 »

stego-tech wrote: post #87
Spooky23 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech organizations are all overstaffed from the pandemic. Engineering is usually boom/bust. Likely outcome is recession and purge. The plucky gen alphas will be in the cube farm to pay they rent.

It depends on your perspective and context. I refuse to subscribe to the defeatist attitudes of "this is how it has been and therefore always shall be" that's in your post, because otherwise what's the point of participating at all if change is impossible? The engineering boom-bust cycle is a recent phenomenon (past fifty years) relatively speaking, and it doesn't mean it's a permanent fixture of civilization unless…

I’m not defeatist. We’re at a high where massively capitalized companies have been in a hiring binge for skilled technical employees for a long time. It’s been good to me - my family is more prosperous by any measure than my parents are grandparents, who were arguably smarter and bolder people.

All of these companies have been incredibly successful… but can they sustain their historically unprecedented growth? Maybe. But when that train slows down, Intel is the example of what happens.

Re: Google won't be mandating a strict return-to-office plan

#127

Post by fallingknife »

fhdsgbbcaA wrote: post #53
Spooky23 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Define “fraud”? If you get your work done in two hours and can’t progress until a teammate does their end, is it better or worse if you are scrolling HN in an office or at home? I run my own company, I do not give a single fuck how, where, or when people get their job done. I only care they deliver. Likewise, people who need to be watched over are not the employees I want in the first place. I’m not running a daycare…

And it should be that way. The responsibility for tax cheats should rest entirely on the person not paying. But that's not how it works. Our government has passed authoritarian laws that put the responsibility on the employer too even if they have no knowledge of the crime.

Re: Google won't be mandating a strict return-to-office plan

#128

Post by FPSDavid »

ryandrake wrote: post #45
worstspotgain wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Bay Area, 1-hour commutes are generally for older and apartment people. Younger family people are in the 2+ range.

When I lived in the Bay Area, my commute was ~2.5 hours each way. I would have killed for a 1 hour commute.

That is a ... choice.

Re: Google won't be mandating a strict return-to-office plan

#129

Post by mmcconnell1618 »

qqtt wrote: post #79
cush wrote: post #51

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…

Open office plans have data that shows it costs less than individual offices but it is sold as "fostering communication" and "team culture." The cost per office is easier to count than the lost productivity of a distracted programmer.

RTO has similar data. If we require a highly distributed workforce to be in a specific physical location x amount of time, y percentage will resign and we don't have to pay severance or announce layoffs. That's easy to calculate vs. the lost productivity of individuals or the impact of losing top performers and lowering the bar.

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