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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

#331

Post by raverbashing »

kmlx wrote: post #309
gfxgirl wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree completely. All metrics at my company, gamedev, show throughput is down ~66% since WFH Me, I want to go back to the office. Like hanging out with my work friends.

same for my clients. the drop in productivity was huge and forced some of them to start letting people go. and all of these companies are now asking their employees back to the office full time in a week or so. i am sure that if productivity hadn't dropped during WFH then there wouldn't be such a big issue. but when the whole company stops producing, then it's pretty clear what needs to be done...

Then address the issue instead of saying "ah this sucks"

Is it their work conditions? IT limitations? Family? Just the fact that everything sucks?

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

#332

Post by terramex »

gfxgirl wrote: post #252
ohthehugemanate wrote: post #199

Just in case you were operating under the illusion that tech giants are run by forward thinking executives who are immune to the usual politics and problems of corporate life. Nope, most of their exec layer is a bunch of people who cut their teeth the industry in the 90's, and are operating within a thick fog of local workplace politics. I guarantee that behind this move is an executive who believes that developers n…

Disagree completely. All metrics at my company, gamedev, show throughput is down ~66% since WFH Me, I want to go back to the office. Like hanging out with my work friends.

Ex-gamedev but I'm still in touch with lots of ex coworkers and friends in the industry and most say the same thing, somewhere between 'low productivity' and 'disaster'. Some of them meet up on their own without management knowledge.

Sales and marketing seem to work as usual though, just from homes. Obviously game sales skyrocketed over past year, so it is hard to reliably grade their performance.

One production team that started transition to remote work before pandemic reported no significant slowdown. They hired bunch of highly skilled multi-disciplinary contractors all over the world and let go most of their regular staff, but it is fairly small team so I don't think this approach can scale.

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

#333

Post by whywhywhywhy »

tudorconstantin wrote: post #159
hyko wrote: 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…

I'm totally not an introvert: I love being around nice people, I love playing table tennis and having lunch with my colleagues. But wasting 1h-2h daily on commuting to/from work is in absolutely no way worthy of this. It's our duty as human beings to resist going back to the office as much as possible. To gain back some of the life we otherwise would spend on commute. Work is for work, not for socializing, or having…

The commute sucks, luckily mines only 30 minutes but honestly after a year of this I'm now convinced video calls are half as productive as in person meetings and some people just never really engage at all in video calls when they used to working in person, not sure if they're consciously aware that they no longer provide useful input, they used to.

I've started going back into the office now for brainstorming because just being able to talk without latency and without only one person being able to talk at once the difference is just night and day, not to mention the casual non-meeting non-slack chats where ideas are born.

I think remote work is now something people will demand but I can't be the only person who's noticed the difference especially in creativity focused work and believe the end game within 2 years will be the people in the office will work on the interesting stuff and remote will work on fixing bugs. Which of course will trickle on to impact salary unfortunately.

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

#334

Post by bumbada »

I have been working remotely for decades.

Most people can't work remotely and productively because they are not trained to do so. E.g. You are in your office (inside your home) and your wife, your dog or child enters it demanding you do some kind of non important issue right now, distracting you from your work.You need to be trained to not them let them distract you. The people living in your house need to be trained as well on what to do.

The training for working in the(external) Office started at school, from a time fiber optics telecommunications were unheard for common mortals.

Most people feel alone because they lack the social skills to make friends outside work, or just lack the initiative, knowledge and internal motivation to work without external pressure and supervision.

The companies that will solve this issue at big scale in the future are those that solve it because the they have to in order to survive(against established companies). It will be a startup that faces all the risks involved, not an established company like Google or Facebook.

It will not be companies that could pay millions for people living in ultra expensive places and are already making big bucks doing that. They don't need to change because the system already works for them.

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

#335

Post by varispeed »

I am an introvert and I am never going back to office. If I won't find work in a forward thinking company I'll do something else, but never in the office. Because of the time gained by not communing, I was finally able to do my hobbies and researching my own business that hopefully I'll make happen next year. Even if they wanted to pay for time spend on commute, no thank you. I realised the time I would be losing is priceless. You won't ever have it. If that means I'll earn less or nothing at all? So what, I'll be happier. Also - we should start demanding that companies will pay for use of our homes as their office. How come paying rent to some rich office owners is fine, but if a worker wants to be paid for use of his or hers home is not?

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

#336

Post by whywhywhywhy »

caskstrength wrote: post #278
timthorn wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have regularly had 2-3h (each way) commutes. It's not because I couldn't change, but because I actively enjoyed the travel each day. Dedicated, no interruption thinking space, and a clear buffer between the stress of work and my home life.

Wouldn't that 3 hours per day be better spent on meditating/yoga/woodcarving (or any other relaxing activity) instead? I mean driving doesn't appear to me like most relaxing activity, but maybe it is just my perspective.

I'd suspect the results would be different, the fact a commute is forced puts your brain into the mode where you solve creative problems in the background without thinking about them. There are good reasons ideas come out of nowhere to you in the shower or on a bus.

That said I'd never ever have a 1+ hour commutes, 30 minutes is plenty but I have noticed a difference in inspiration this year and I put it down to this.

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

#337

Post by qPM9l3XJrF »

wu_187 wrote: post #203
doktorhladnjak wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has some of the best offices in the world. They’ve built up these offices as a clear differentiator from their talent competitors. It’s lead to many companies offering free lunch and other perks tied to their physical space. Giving it up would mean changing the culture and the value prop of working there. I can’t say I’m surprised they don’t want to do that.

Sadly that culture changed long ago. Even prior to covid a lot of companies were downscaling their perks as they offshored jobs to Asia, thanks to our previous administration.

Can you give specific instances of this happening? I feel like offshoring tech jobs has been the bogeyman that has never delivered in our industry for a really long time.

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

#338

Post by kaishiro »

gfxgirl wrote: post #252
ohthehugemanate wrote: post #199

Just in case you were operating under the illusion that tech giants are run by forward thinking executives who are immune to the usual politics and problems of corporate life. Nope, most of their exec layer is a bunch of people who cut their teeth the industry in the 90's, and are operating within a thick fog of local workplace politics. I guarantee that behind this move is an executive who believes that developers n…

Disagree completely. All metrics at my company, gamedev, show throughput is down ~66% since WFH Me, I want to go back to the office. Like hanging out with my work friends.

Would be curious to hear what KPIs you're measuring that so consistently show a 66% drop across the board. Pretty impressive measurement...

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

#340

Post by flr03 »

keinten wrote: post #320

As what would be described as an aspergers person, I find offices full of people playing bizarre political and social games with each other that I don't have any particular interest in and the workplaces themselves to be extremely unproductive. I hate working in offices with people often appointed due to nepotism or just because they are like the person hiring, that I would rather be poor then work in them. The entir…

Yes, but that's an illusion to be believe that political games, nepotism etc would disappear without offices. That's just how working in a corporation is, sadly.
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