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Google is accelerating reopening of offices and putting limits on remote work

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Re: Google is accelerating reopening of offices and putting limits on remote work

#141
post #140

When will introverts realise that their working conditions are being dictated to them by extroverts? The pandemic-driven remote working is hell for some people, and unfortunately they call the shots. I don’t mind coming into your office now and again (there’s a special dimension to IRL connections), but the reason I don’t want to work there full time is that it’s crap for knowledge work. I outspend you by 10x per hea…

Very well said. I am actually more productive working from home. I think asking everyone to work at the office again is just a decision by extrovert people managers.

Re: Google is accelerating reopening of offices and putting limits on remote work

#142
I think this is mostly driven by management's insecurities / needs to see their "subjects" right in front of them and their typical need to "show" their activities in an obvious/noisy way. Typical managers tend to be extroverts and find allies in other extroverts or in people who happen to work in/enjoy the social interaction in office. Unfortunately there is not much representation of introverts in the decision making circle so those people will be once more thrown under the "quality-of-face-to-face-interactions" bus. Engineering-driven, low-politics, not-so-large orgs might do things a bit differently.

Re: Google is accelerating reopening of offices and putting limits on remote work

#143
If the employees of these companies want a remote life after the experience of this past year, they'll leave the company. If the companies are experiencing enough loss they may reconsider their remote stance. I think it's unlikely though. More likely than not some employees will leave and the company will hire new employees that don't want to work remote.

Re: Google is accelerating reopening of offices and putting limits on remote work

#144
My company is located in a place that's pretty difficult to reach via public transport. It's common knowledge that owning a car is expensive. We are working fully remote since november, and I realized that I just own a car for the sake of getting to work.

Don't get me wrong: I like to drive "somewhere" on the weekend or visit family and friends, but for that, an older car would be fine enough. Heck, I could even persue my dream of a convertible. I just own a decent car to have a reliable way to get to work. Every. Day.

Things might change for me moving forward.

Re: Google is accelerating reopening of offices and putting limits on remote work

#145
post #69

As someone who's worked only remotely for several years, this makes sense. I know many will disagree with this assertion but in my estimation in-person collaboration is far better than online-only. I think the best balance is at least a couple days per week in the office and the rest remote.

The problem is that everyone (in the team) needs to be in the office the exact same two days. That’s difficult to synchronize, some people may want to be at the office on Fridays, while other may prefer Mondays or Wednesdays or...

I solve hard problems for a living. This doesn't even register.

My post-vaccine plan is to have a "mulmen day" where I set the expectation with my teammates and stakeholders that I am in the office and a "float" day where I come in to align with someone else's day who I need to work with face-to-face for whatever reason. If everyone works this way then we can meet most scheduling needs. If we expand this to two float days a week then it is trivial.

There's no reason for the whole team to be colocated on the same day on a regular basis. Those kind of team-wide meetings never benefit from whiteboarding or any other in-person process. In fact the limitations of remote work make that kind of collaboration better because you have to actually prepare your thoughts and material.

Even pre-covid getting calendar time required a week of notice. Office hours were once-a-week and required at least 24 hours notice. Personally my office hours are on Wednesday. If someone books a session I come in, if not I don't. Nothing changes.

In Covid times I have had the most productive period of my career while my team grew by 50%. I have no problem getting coworker time ad-hoc, even remote. Communication is not difficult. We got better at using tooling to write documents and draw diagrams. We don't use whiteboard analogies.

I honestly see no downside to the remote work and a long list of personal, professional and environmental benefits.

Re: Google is accelerating reopening of offices and putting limits on remote work

#146
post #140

When will introverts realise that their working conditions are being dictated to them by extroverts? The pandemic-driven remote working is hell for some people, and unfortunately they call the shots. I don’t mind coming into your office now and again (there’s a special dimension to IRL connections), but the reason I don’t want to work there full time is that it’s crap for knowledge work. I outspend you by 10x per hea…

>>>When will introverts realise that their working conditions are being dictated to them by extroverts?

This is my exact complaint, even in the Marine Corps. All of our senior leadership are charismatic extroverts. They are trying to adapt "distributed command & control" because they recognize that large management nodes are easy to spot and kill. But they still insist on all forms of concentrated workspaces, in-person meetings, video teleconferences, etc... We have the technology, but it will never be fully embraced because it is fundamentally anathema to the character of our decision-makers.

Re: Google is accelerating reopening of offices and putting limits on remote work

#147
post #140

When will introverts realise that their working conditions are being dictated to them by extroverts? The pandemic-driven remote working is hell for some people, and unfortunately they call the shots. I don’t mind coming into your office now and again (there’s a special dimension to IRL connections), but the reason I don’t want to work there full time is that it’s crap for knowledge work. I outspend you by 10x per hea…

Very well said. I am actually more productive working from home. I think asking everyone to work at the office again is just a decision by extrovert people managers.

[deleted]

Re: Google is accelerating reopening of offices and putting limits on remote work

#148
post #61

> If employees want to work from home beyond Sept. 1, they will need to formally apply for a max of 14 days annually Somehow this sounds to me like: "Oh, and remember: next Friday... is Hawaiian shirt day. So, you know, if you want to, go ahead and wear a Hawaiian shirt and jeans."

That's even more tiring than going to work everyday. Now you have to shop for a shirt that you'll probably never wear again.

Re: Google is accelerating reopening of offices and putting limits on remote work

#149

As someone who's worked only remotely for several years, this makes sense. I know many will disagree with this assertion but in my estimation in-person collaboration is far better than online-only. I think the best balance is at least a couple days per week in the office and the rest remote.

I feel like ideally, in say a 3/2 scenario, most people would be in the office on the same days. But I wonder how that would be accomplished. Everyone's reasons for wanting to stay home certain days might be different.

Re: Google is accelerating reopening of offices and putting limits on remote work

#150
post #104

And, now that they don't have to be first, Amazon is in: Amazon updates remote work guidance, plans to ‘return to an office-centric culture as our baseline’ https://www.geekwire.com/2021/amazon-updates-remote-work-gui... oof.

Today is a big disaster for those who foresaw changes in the workplace. Now we have only tier 2 companies (Dropbox/Spotify) who have gone full remote.

We shall see, but it feels like just a tug in the direction of in-office after 13 months (for the big west coast companies) of things going the other way. I don't think anyone was ever expecting huge FAAMG companies to start selling off their office buildings. I'm mostly interested to see if the guidance loosens for hiring remote employees as well as how much push their is from the top to have managers push their employees to work 5 days a week in the office.

Personally, I'm still expecting to see a much higher percentage of time spent working from home at this time next year compared to the beginning of 2020.

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