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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

#141

Post by generic92034 »

ultimafan wrote: post #106
mschuster91 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In office I feel obligated to actually be productive from the combined shame of being seen as a slacker and less physical opportunities to goof off. If anything, an office makes for more unproductivity than working remotely. No random people showing up at your desk with "can you help out real quick (LOL) here and there", no "hey we gotta wait for colleague XYZ before we head for lunch break", no coffee room talk...

That's true. I suppose if you are a person who has an iron will and good discipline the potential for productivity is much higher at home where you can lock in and just grind for a few hours with no interruptions. I am not that person and suspect many others aren't either, so there's that conflict between potential and real world outcomes where some people are just more productive in office even with all the distract…

In my eyes the individual differences here could mean that it would be better to leave the decisions about WFH or office work to the teams. The team manager should know who can perform well from where and they can react if an arrangement does not work out as expected.

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

#142

Post by dijksterhuis »

whstl wrote: post #48
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…

> There are _some_ roles which may require in-person IME when working in a Product role, it worked better from the office. Doesn't have to be every day, but being able to talk directly to people is much better than having to schedule meetings. Tech positions don't even need daily video calls IMO. My team experimented with a few days of written status updates and it was fine. But they chose to have a 10-mins stand-up…

> being able to talk directly to people is much better than having to schedule meetings

i do not understand what people are talking about when they say things like this

    personA: hey @personB you got 20 mins to talk about XYZ?
    personB: yeah gimme 10 mins
    personA: k, i’ll grab a coffee
    personA: /zoom start
that’s ^ not scheduling a meeting. that’s having the same direct conversation but with like one extra step (joining zoom).

the rest of what your comment says is fair enough. i just see this mentioned a lot in anti-WFH leaning comments. often about how hard it is to mentor a junior.

(i can’t remember the exact slack command but you hopefully get the idea).

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

#143

Post by hiatus »

epolanski wrote: post #133
ryandrake wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I find it absurd how Americans can't give up on their suburbs and car centric development dystopia and then spend so much time in their cars.

What steps do you suggest an average person take?

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

#144

Post by kbolino »

KittenInABox wrote: post #43
blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's not like cities give their money to every suburban mom. It's like this: Suburbs cannot function without freeways, but the presence of freeways harm the property values of city neighborhoods not suburban ones. SFH simply produces less tax revenue than an entire apartment building by land, so any statewide social services (education, freeway maintenance...) is paid proportionately more by cities than by SFH. There…

This feels more like a planning/governance problem than an innate property.

I've lived in SFH on the edge of a major city and on the edge of farmland and there's a wide gulf in the level of infrastructure that they had access to, and also a significant difference in the amount of tax that was owed. It's hard for me to believe that those two very different scenarios are functionally equivalent.

Moreover, vast swathes of the city I used to live next to, despite having significantly higher tax rates, were ultimately paying a lot less in tax due to severely depressed income levels and property values. There might have been a higher mean revenue per acre in the city as a whole, but there also was a much higher variance.

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

#145

Post by epolanski »

mrangle wrote: post #38

There's going to be a significant exodus of Amazon employees once the mandate kicks in fully. A percentage aren't able to come into the office every day, due to unrealistic commute logistics. Google making this headline sets them up to catch a lot of talent at once, to the point that I suspect this may be part of the policy's intent.

We snatched a great talent from Amazon.

And we didn't even need to throw crazy money, just full remote and 16 weeks of vacations per year.

It's amazing what amazing talent you can get paying with time rather than money they don't need.

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

#146

Post by stego-tech »

Spooky23 wrote: post #126
stego-tech wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Oh goodness, if we’re talking about sustainable growth then boy do I have some hockeystick charts to reject that notion. For decades, growth has largely been an illusion created through clever accounting and inflation metrics - it’s why the industry keeps desperately trying to jump on “brand new” stuff like crypto, blockchain, and generative models: a new industry means actual growth as opposed to illusory growth, which would create a new wealth class above and beyond any of the existing billionaires of today. For all of Sam Altman’s own blowharding, he’s not wrong that whatever the next brand-new revolutionary industry turns out to be - AI, space mining, molecular fabrication, whatever - will require literal trillions of dollars to explode into a 100x ROI.

That said, if we abandon this idea of “infinite growth forever” and accept that market saturation and incremental improvements provide opportunities to rebalance structures and remediate institutional flaws, then there’s a lot more hope to be had. You can’t build new things forever, and eventually need to take time to pay off outstanding debts, improve existing systems, modernize legacy infrastructure, and basically make everything simpler and sustainable for whatever the Next Big Thing turns out to be.

…unfortunately for me, making that pitch to leadership usually just gets me laughed out of the room because maintenance and efficiency isn’t “sexy”, nor does it boost their share valuations. Ah well, won’t stop me from trying.

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

#147

Post by worstspotgain »

epolanski wrote: post #133
ryandrake wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I find it absurd how Americans can't give up on their suburbs and car centric development dystopia and then spend so much time in their cars.

People would go for condos if there were cheap large ones nearby. Alas, the supply restrictionists blocked all vertical development decades ago in order to inflate prices 10x and capture tech wages. That left SFHs and townhomes in far away places.

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

#149

Post by tesch1 »

epolanski wrote: post #133
ryandrake wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I find it absurd how Americans can't give up on their suburbs and car centric development dystopia and then spend so much time in their cars.

Because door-to-door transport is faster than public transportation. Average American commute time is 26 minutes, what is it where you live?

https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter8/urban-trans....

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

#150

Post by angmarsbane »

worstspotgain wrote: post #147
epolanski wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it absurd how Americans can't give up on their suburbs and car centric development dystopia and then spend so much time in their cars.

People would go for condos if there were cheap large ones nearby. Alas, the supply restrictionists blocked all vertical development decades ago in order to inflate prices 10x and capture tech wages. That left SFHs and townhomes in far away places.

+1 for family sized (3 bedroom condos) if they existed close to work we could have families and jobs - imagine!
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