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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

#271

Post by Izkata »

asib wrote: post #187
zamadatix wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like you say, the set of people who'd be pushing the argument from that angle is inherently pretty small. Basically either those that don't need money from a job in the first place + those that want some extra money from a job but only when it's extremely convenient and that boundary just happens to be WFH or not. The others don't inherently care more about their employer than themselves, they care more more about th…

My labour history knowledge is pretty non-existent, but I assume past progress was often made via unions, e.g. 8-hour work day. Seems like this is a situation begging for workers (at Amazon and elsewhere) to unionise and demand the right to WFH through the power of collective bargaining. The workers that progressed labour rights in the past surely mostly needed their jobs too, so this situation doesn't seem unique at…

Legal progress yes, but it had plenty of loopholes and pushback and wasn't normalized until the Ford Motor Company did it (combined with going from a 6-day work week to 5 days), because Henry Ford believed the extra downtime would increase productivity and possibly even demand for the cars he sold. His success compared to competitors is why everyone else followed suit.

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

#272

Post by 39896880 »

Dang, can we get a filter for RTO submissions? The discussion hasn’t changed in years. There is nothing new to say about RTO itself. If someone has insights about a particular company and their policies then fine, but we are approaching the fifth year since the original WFH shift.

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

#273

Post by Foobar8568 »

ktosobcy wrote: post #249
Foobar8568 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am at 2h30 total commute, and will be soon at 3h-3h30, in Switzerland. At least, I can work remotely 2days+what ever I need depending of the day.

Uhm... that's like almost getting from one side of Switzerland to another (Zurich-Basel is like 1h by train?)

Well there are plenty of people going from Montreux or further to Geneva. With the changes in schedule, any trains going around the lake past Renens will be slower by at least 5min.

Over the years, I had met several workers who were doing 2h+ per leg commute.

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

#274

Post by closeparen »

BeetleB wrote: post #138
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 if you're required to RTO, you should insist on not having Zoom/Teams/Webex on while in the office. "Come to my cube if you need me". Way before the pandemic, I almost never had those tools running on my work laptop - unless it was for a (rare at the time) cross-geo meeting. A coworker once sent me a screenshot of how I appeared in the IM tool - Last seen 120 days ago . Sadly, that went away once we hired our…

In the best case you might have all the engineers rolling up to the same line manager sitting in the same office, but those above entry-level are expected to spend a good portion of their time collaborating across teams (and therefore across sites).

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

#275

Post by closeparen »

cruffle_duffle wrote: post #208
honkycat wrote: post #73

RTO is going to be brutal for us in 3rd tier cities like PDX The tech scene here SUCKS, but I much prefer the lifestyle to a large city ( plus, I can buy a house here. ) Not sure what will happen if the days of remote work ends. How will I get a gig? There was a time in the mid 2010s were they were obsessed with "servant leaders" and "leading from the front"... those days are long-fucking-gone. Guarantee the executiv…

> Not sure what will happen if the days of remote work ends. How will I get a gig? The same way you did in 2019. Like it always was.

Okay, then give me 2019 home prices back.

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

#277

Post by zamadatix »

asib wrote: post #187
zamadatix wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like you say, the set of people who'd be pushing the argument from that angle is inherently pretty small. Basically either those that don't need money from a job in the first place + those that want some extra money from a job but only when it's extremely convenient and that boundary just happens to be WFH or not. The others don't inherently care more about their employer than themselves, they care more more about th…

My labour history knowledge is pretty non-existent, but I assume past progress was often made via unions, e.g. 8-hour work day. Seems like this is a situation begging for workers (at Amazon and elsewhere) to unionise and demand the right to WFH through the power of collective bargaining. The workers that progressed labour rights in the past surely mostly needed their jobs too, so this situation doesn't seem unique at…

(I want to preface this that I consider myself pro-union, so people don't just stop reading halfway through. Also this is all my 2 cents, I'm not an expert in these topics by any means)

Unions can definitely solve it, be it the actual optimal thing to do for each individual or not, should everyone involved unionize. Even then though, workers would also like to work 2 hours a week for the same pay... it doesn't mean a union forming to do it would be successful. The same dynamics eventually come back into play: is it actually more efficient? If not, is that money loss something the union workers are willing to take? It's tempting to say "they can just force the business to cut profits anyways!" and... sure, they could, but they could do that while being more efficient and get even more money too. I.e. ultimately the union and people that make it up are just as interested in making sure they balance doing a certain amount of what they don't like with a certain amount of being efficient to get the most out of it. Whoever you make the group that needs to be convinced it's worthwhile you still need to convince it's the overall more efficient choice.

On the topic of unions though, unions typically form for lower paid workers. Not that they never form for higher paid workers but they tend to have more options already, less to gain, and more to lose when joining a union compared to a lower paid workers. The amount of effort a business will put in to avoiding a union will also vary with pay as the relative asks tend to scale as well e.g. on pay a union for ~70k/year auto workers wanting a 10% pay bump is cheaper to accept than a union for ~140k/year tech workers wanting a 10% pay bump.

I think tech workers will eventually make and join unions regularly. Maybe not in the current pay and political climate, but eventually. Until then our relatively small problems of "having to deal with showing up in person at work for one of the higher paying jobs" are not going to be as huge of drivers to unionize as places that wanted to keep fingers or earn a more average salary.

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

#278

Post by tesch1 »

longnt80 wrote: post #173
tesch1 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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... .

They didn't necessary talk about time in commute. Maybe they thought spending time inside cars was useless. Sure your commute is shorter but most Americans also have to drive everywhere in their cars. To be honest, it's shit. Edit: also, the chart is too simple to know how they conducted and came up with the data.

Tbf, some Americans might think it's shit to live life in a 100 m^2 box they don't even own and commuting in a crowded stinky wagon for longer than 26 minutes.

Not sure there's just one right way to live though. I wasn't saying there is, just sharing some data to a discussion oblivious to the realities of most Americans.

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

#279

Post by BeetleB »

closeparen wrote: post #274
BeetleB wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if you're required to RTO, you should insist on not having Zoom/Teams/Webex on while in the office. "Come to my cube if you need me". Way before the pandemic, I almost never had those tools running on my work laptop - unless it was for a (rare at the time) cross-geo meeting. A coworker once sent me a screenshot of how I appeared in the IM tool - Last seen 120 days ago . Sadly, that went away once we hired our…

In the best case you might have all the engineers rolling up to the same line manager sitting in the same office, but those above entry-level are expected to spend a good portion of their time collaborating across teams (and therefore across sites).

Varies quite a bit by company. Pre-pandemic, we had phones in our cubes :-) Thus I could easily turn Teams off. My immediate team was physically nearby, and people elsewhere could email. They'd call if urgent.

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

#280

Post by spacemadness »

worstspotgain wrote: post #242
spacemadness wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve worked in tech in the Bay for over a decade and met a handful of people with that insane of a commute. It’s not normal.

That's because having children in SF is not "normal," a huge fraction of new workers are single male tech workers. SF is the city with the fewest children per capita in the country, Daly City is #6. https://www.aaastateofplay.com/the-u-s-cities-with-the-most-...

Plenty of my colleagues have had kids.
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