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Google’s Scientific Approach to Work-Life Balance

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Re: Google’s Scientific Approach to Work-Life Balance

#31

Post by greggman »

dethtron5000 wrote: post #3

I would be curious if Googlers on this list feel that Google does a good job putting these insights into practice.

No idea as like others have said the survey is only 2 years old.

What I can say is Google is the first company I've personally worked at where it was easy to always work. At all my previous jobs (video games) the dev kits could not be taken home and even if there happened to be a PC version there's no way I could have taken home the terabytes of source data needed to work on the game. Nor would any company have let me if I could.

The short of that meant once I left work I couldn't keep working.

At Google on the other hand my work email went up 10-100 fold over previous companies. I could read that anytime day or night and even if I didn't intend to read it at home I'd open up my laptop and given that I left gmail running I'd see new messages, open a few without thinking and get stucked in and 20-60 mins would go by at ~12:00am.

I saw several other employees responding to email between 11pm and 1am all from home.

I'm not saying that's bad for work/life balance. I have no idea. I certainly felt good to respond to people as soon as I noticed but maybe it would have been better to disconnect?

Similarly I could ssh/vnc in if I wanted to. And, working on Chrome which is open source meant I could work anywhere on any machine I chose. Something I wasn't used to from previous jobs. My understanding is some of those things are far more common for other programming jobs. My financial friends all have ways to log into work from home when they need to.

Yet another is being involved in a web browser meant it was easy to get sucked into tons of mailing lists. The WebGL list, the Web Audio list, the W3 lists, the Web Apps List. All the places where browser standards are discussed and that discussion goes on 24/7. It's very tempting to keep checking how people are responding to your comments or where some other part of the standards discussion is going. So that's also hard to turn off.

Again I don't know if that's good or bad for work/life balance. It certainly feels good to participate. Is that work? Or is it more like going to a PTA meeting or city council meeting?

No where was I encouraged to work after hours by Google. It was completely up to me to decide if I checked email at home or if I worked on stuff at home and if I stayed late or went home early. All I'm saying is it was easy to do these things, something I wasn't used to from previous jobs.

PS: You don't have to work at Google to participate in those mailing lists. If you want to influence web standards just get involved.

Re: Google’s Scientific Approach to Work-Life Balance

#32

Post by overgryphon »

pmiller2 wrote: post #30

I'm interested in identifying companies that focus on results and not hours of "butt in seat" time. What's the best way to do that? I prefer to be a segmentor, but it seems like a lot of companies prefer integrators, to the extent that they want, as alluded to in another comment, to eliminate work/life balance by making work and life synonymous. That's definitely not for me.

This can depend more on the particular product group and manager you work for than which company. All big companies have less than perfect managers, and some people have a hard time accepting work/life balance choices that are different than their own.

Re: Google’s Scientific Approach to Work-Life Balance

#33

Post by AndrewKemendo »

Bulkington wrote: post #4

Is it possible for anyone who thinks for a living to truly 'segment'? The best I can hope is really intense distraction: mountain biking, sailing, even golf. It's amazing how little I consider anything else while playing golf--but I couldn't get away in the middle of the afternoon unless I had the flexibility to get good work done from 4-7AM. Intuitively, I'd bet job satisfaction is right up there with mate selection…

This is probably why Intelligence analysts steadily rank as highest in job satisfaction [1], you literally can't take your work home with you.

[1] http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/best-jobs/2011/caree...

Re: Google’s Scientific Approach to Work-Life Balance

#34

Post by StavrosK »

Bulkington wrote: post #4

Is it possible for anyone who thinks for a living to truly 'segment'? The best I can hope is really intense distraction: mountain biking, sailing, even golf. It's amazing how little I consider anything else while playing golf--but I couldn't get away in the middle of the afternoon unless I had the flexibility to get good work done from 4-7AM. Intuitively, I'd bet job satisfaction is right up there with mate selection…

I don't see why not. When I clock out of work, it all stops. I don't get work email on my personal phone, I sign off IM, etc. I am completely unreachable (except for calls, which nobody ever really does). No matter how stressful the day was, or how much stress is coming up, there's a clear delineation between work and life, and one doesn't bleed into the other.

It has kept me pretty happy with my job for more than a year now, even though I've taken almost no vacation (which is not as bad as it sounds, I work remotely).

Re: Google’s Scientific Approach to Work-Life Balance

#35

Post by kevindication »

StavrosK wrote: post #34
Bulkington wrote: post #4

Is it possible for anyone who thinks for a living to truly 'segment'? The best I can hope is really intense distraction: mountain biking, sailing, even golf. It's amazing how little I consider anything else while playing golf--but I couldn't get away in the middle of the afternoon unless I had the flexibility to get good work done from 4-7AM. Intuitively, I'd bet job satisfaction is right up there with mate selection…

I don't see why not. When I clock out of work, it all stops. I don't get work email on my personal phone, I sign off IM, etc. I am completely unreachable (except for calls, which nobody ever really does). No matter how stressful the day was, or how much stress is coming up, there's a clear delineation between work and life, and one doesn't bleed into the other. It has kept me pretty happy with my job for more than a…

Both of these positions on the subject are needlessly binary. I often find it the case that, even though I erect careful boundaries between work and non-work, when I leave a problem on my desk, I will continue to ruminate about a solution throughout the weekend, say. Similarly, I will Strategically avoid email when I'm recharging. I don't think it's so easy to boil down as black and white.

Re: Google’s Scientific Approach to Work-Life Balance

#36

Post by hnriot »

incision wrote: post #24
Bulkington wrote: post #4

Is it possible for anyone who thinks for a living to truly 'segment'? The best I can hope is really intense distraction: mountain biking, sailing, even golf. It's amazing how little I consider anything else while playing golf--but I couldn't get away in the middle of the afternoon unless I had the flexibility to get good work done from 4-7AM. Intuitively, I'd bet job satisfaction is right up there with mate selection…

>"Is it possible for anyone who thinks for a living to truly 'segment'?" Sure. I'm finding this really hard to articulate, but here goes... I feel like this should be self-evident, but we've been trained to think otherwise, to believe that giving so much of our time and energy is completely normal or even noble. I've worked with my hands and with my mind, as a full-time employee, a union member and an at-will contrac…

* Elsewhere this is prevented by unions, regulations and the implicit understanding that allowing the next man to devalue himself today will devalue the group tomorrow.

yeah, but we make 3x as much as the union protected workers. It's union protection that ruining this country, look at the entitlement problem, hell, you only have to look at the train driver in chicago who fell asleep at the wheel, it a non union protected area she'd have been fired, instead she goes right back to work and drives a train up an escalator asleep again.

Re: Google’s Scientific Approach to Work-Life Balance

#37

Post by jacques_chester »

greggman wrote: post #31
dethtron5000 wrote: post #3

I would be curious if Googlers on this list feel that Google does a good job putting these insights into practice.

No idea as like others have said the survey is only 2 years old. What I can say is Google is the first company I've personally worked at where it was easy to always work. At all my previous jobs (video games) the dev kits could not be taken home and even if there happened to be a PC version there's no way I could have taken home the terabytes of source data needed to work on the game. Nor would any company have let m…

Let me help you.

> Again I don't know if that's good or bad for work/life balance.

It's bad.

Re: Google’s Scientific Approach to Work-Life Balance

#38

Post by savv »

incision wrote: post #24
Bulkington wrote: post #4

Is it possible for anyone who thinks for a living to truly 'segment'? The best I can hope is really intense distraction: mountain biking, sailing, even golf. It's amazing how little I consider anything else while playing golf--but I couldn't get away in the middle of the afternoon unless I had the flexibility to get good work done from 4-7AM. Intuitively, I'd bet job satisfaction is right up there with mate selection…

>"Is it possible for anyone who thinks for a living to truly 'segment'?" Sure. I'm finding this really hard to articulate, but here goes... I feel like this should be self-evident, but we've been trained to think otherwise, to believe that giving so much of our time and energy is completely normal or even noble. I've worked with my hands and with my mind, as a full-time employee, a union member and an at-will contrac…

> The big difference between knowledge workers and everyone else is what individuals and workers as a group will put up with.

There are exceptions, such as in Finland [1]

> Overtime work is allowed in Finland, and represents any work done extra the maximum regular working hours, to a maximum of 138 hours in a 4 months period and a total of 250 hours per a calendar year.

[1] http://www.workinfinland.com/what-are-the-normal-working-hou...

Re: Google’s Scientific Approach to Work-Life Balance

#39

Post by jacques_chester »

dave1629 wrote: post #26

What's missing from this is that Google's culture is designed to eliminate work-life balance by making as much of life as possible focus around work. A significant part of the compensation for Google employees is in the form of good "free" meals (including dinners), lots of services, entertainment, etc., all without leaving the Google campus. Would be interesting to see how the results are different from similar surv…

Microsoft pretty much invented the all-encompassing work environment. The nickname in the 90s for the Redmond campus was "The Velvet Sweatshop".

Re: Google’s Scientific Approach to Work-Life Balance

#40

Post by yummyfajitas »

insuffi wrote: post #12
QuantumChaos wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't really get the point of the article, so I'm just going to comment on work-life balance at Google in general. Basically, you are freed from any unnecessary constraints in choosing your own work life balance. You are judged by the work you do, regardless of how long it took you to do that work, or which hours of the day you did that work. The company goes to reasonable lengths to allow remote working, but they…

Except for B) having nothing to do with free market. 1)The problem with a long-hours work culture is that long hours don't translate to productivity, and it's rather hard to quantify productivity in a programming setting. It's an emotional/managerial phenomenon.2)It's not avoiding competition either. If the optimal work hours for a programmer are 4-6 hours, then 10 hours surely will lower his/her productivity and jus…

he problem with a long-hours work culture is that long hours don't translate to productivity,

[Citation needed]. Note that citing a source that vaguely asserts data exists is insufficient. So is citing a source showing that mean hourly productivity in construction/manufacturing goes down.

Make sure to differentiate between lowering productivity (=production/hours) and lowering product in your answer.

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