161–170 of 296 posts
I go to the office almost everyday by choice. Free food, snacks, and coffee, gym, and medical clinics on campus. And it's just nice to get dressed and leave the house. But it's really nice to have the flexibility to WFH when I need to, especially just mornings to skip traffic.
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.
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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.
I agree that kind of commute is insane, but maybe we don't all want to raise our families in shoe boxes (often surrounded by filth and crime) in the city centre (as if everyone in France lives in downtown Paris).
You may find that thrilling, but I don't. None of it.
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…
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'm not sure this applies to Google. Their offices and food are pretty nice. And their gyms are top-notch. If you stick with the salad bar, I'd venture to guess the freshness and nutrition variety will be better than most IT guys can get at home.
Of course, this does not mean RTO won't suck.
MSP is a reasonable description of my firm. We have a helpdesk etc and provided calls/jobs/projects are fixed/process within SLAs etc then all is fine. I am now a lot more chilled about where people work from. In return, I know I get a lot back.
However, collaboration in person is useful and no amount of email or webrtc is going to replace that. We loosely require two days per week in the office.
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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.
> 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 I agree that kind of commute is insane, but maybe we don't all want to raise our families in shoe boxes (often surrounded by filth and crime) in the city centre (as if everyone in France lives in downtown Paris). You may find that thrilling, but I don't. None of it.
Companies should be forced to pay some sort of commute tax every time they force someone to come into an office. Driving an hour to the office and back home, in your car has an impact on everyone and everything around them, it's time they pay up.
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Suburbs in general are losers from a government operations perspective. 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, a…
Suburban infrastructure is usually much more sparse, of lower quality and a lot of it is shifted to the local business/homeowner. As an example - city water vs Water wells & Septic tank/fields. Gravel roads without sidewalks, etc. So it's not 100% evident that cities subsidize rural counties. Cities do provide the larger tax base for states, which probably subsidize more rural counties through incentives tied to cert…
The infrastructure relies on state support, which is usually from Federal funds and personal income tax. That aid is a transfer payment from cities to localities. Bigger states, bigger transfer. Also, the federal funds are sourced from bigger states to the smaller states.
Thats one of the amazing things about the US. The wealth of the coasts ensured that the smaller states weren’t left behind.
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In the Bay Area, 1-hour commutes are generally for older and apartment people. Younger family people are in the 2+ range.
Everyone I know with a long commute can afford a shorter commute, they just trade the commute for a larger single-family dwelling.