Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

511–520 of 1001 posts

Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4

#511

Post by seanmcdirmid »

librish wrote: post #84

I think anyone who's claiming that remote work has been "proven" to be better or worse is wrong. There are some studies but they use estimations and proxies, carrying the same flaws as doing performance reviews based on lines of code. We've proven that the big tech companies can go fully remote and not completely crash and burn, that's about it. Some people love the lack of commute and less semi-forced hanging out, s…

> I personally prefer a company where everyone's on site. I want to be able to quickly resolve any issues in person, not over voice call or slack, and I think that an environment where someone can tap me on the shoulder when they need help leads to overall higher productivity, even if individual productivity suffers temporarily.

On the flip side, there are people that prefer a company where everyone is remote. They want to be able to resolve any issues quickly over voice calls or slack, and do not want to feel at a disadvantage because they are isolated from in person discussions that could have just as easily happened over VC.

Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4

#512

Post by ttmb »

buzzert wrote: post #409
erosenbe0 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are thousands of cases in America where the child care provider (grandparent) died of COVID.

That's a very dishonest distortion of statistics.

So over 800k people over the age of 50 have died from covid in the US.

Are you saying that it's "dishonest" to estimate that at least 1% of them are grandparents involved in childcare? By napkin math this more than works out; I'll also hint that if you spend even a minute researching, the stats on how many of these people are likely to be grandparents, and how many grandparents are child carers, are readily findable. If you care to engage in an honest discussion.

Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4

#513

Post by uhtred »

ejb999 wrote: post #111

I have been fully remote my entire career (several decades), in fact in 30+ years have never been on site anywhere for more than 2 weeks total. Wouldn't have it any other way. But as a counter-point, seeing a whole bunch of people who were never remote before, how little work they are actually doing, it is no surprise to me that a lot of employers are going to start forcing - to the extent possible - employees back i…

I don't believe you are describing even 5% of remote software engineers. And those 5% would find ways to not do anything even in the office, but then they could also distract others so they are better off at home.

Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4

#514

Post by tibiahurried »

librish wrote: post #84

I think anyone who's claiming that remote work has been "proven" to be better or worse is wrong. There are some studies but they use estimations and proxies, carrying the same flaws as doing performance reviews based on lines of code. We've proven that the big tech companies can go fully remote and not completely crash and burn, that's about it. Some people love the lack of commute and less semi-forced hanging out, s…

I have worked at a couple of FAANG. When I wanted to get things done, I would hide in a meeting room, or I would work from home. The office is the most unproductive environment (at least for me). People will interrupt you all the time, for random things, chit chat, coffee and what not. Having head phones all the time did not make any difference.

I wish companies would understand this.

Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4

#515

Post by makeitdouble »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #447
makeitdouble wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This seems rational until you are actually responsible for managing a large organization. This reads like an argument against single management for large organizations. If you need to fit thousands of square pegs into holes, perhaps it's not the best approach in the first place.

Central vs distributed government. Which do you think works better?

A mixture of both is the usual approach I think.

A central government delegating most of the day to day management of citizen's environment to local, highly autonomous entities is a common pattern.

Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4

#517

Post by seanmcdirmid »

vkou wrote: post #479
bseidensticker wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at Google in KIR for the past 5 years. You calling the working conditions "atrocious" is hilarious. This is why people call Googlers entitled.

KIR-D legitimately sucks. Giant rooms, fifty million desks in each, not a wall in sight.

Supposedly it is better now given all the people who have decided to WFH. They actually have nice comfy common areas again. This is what I heard during our VC lunch today, I've never been to the office myself (technically my desk was there, but I started during the pandemic).

Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4

#518

Post by UncleMeat »

ppsreejith wrote: post #449
UncleMeat wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook's remote work policies aren't even as generous as Google's as far as I can tell. They have level requirements.

From: https://www.metacareers.com/life/what-remote-and-flexible-wo... > As of June 15, Facebook is opening up remote work to all levels across the company. Anyone whose role can be done remotely can request remote work.

I must have been off. Then it is precisely the same policy as Google.

Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4

#519

Post by dmitrygr »

munificent wrote: post #174
librish wrote: post #84

I think anyone who's claiming that remote work has been "proven" to be better or worse is wrong. There are some studies but they use estimations and proxies, carrying the same flaws as doing performance reviews based on lines of code. We've proven that the big tech companies can go fully remote and not completely crash and burn, that's about it. Some people love the lack of commute and less semi-forced hanging out, s…

> We've proven that the big tech companies can go fully remote and not completely crash and burn, that's about it. Agreed. We've proven that big tech companies can continue to be productive for up to two years going remote. I suspect that that doesn't generalize very well to being completely remote over the long term. It works well when you already have a bunch of personal relationships between teammates that were es…

  > It works well when you already have a bunch of personal relationships between teammates that were established while the company was in-person.
Clearly you have no idea how much churn is common in SV. At google after a 2-year tenure your "percent" (what percent of SWE is newer than you) reaches 50%. What personal relationships do all those who were hired remote and never saw the inside of the office have?

Re: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4

#520

Post by ryandrake »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #207
librish wrote: post #84

I think anyone who's claiming that remote work has been "proven" to be better or worse is wrong. There are some studies but they use estimations and proxies, carrying the same flaws as doing performance reviews based on lines of code. We've proven that the big tech companies can go fully remote and not completely crash and burn, that's about it. Some people love the lack of commute and less semi-forced hanging out, s…

> We've proven that the big tech companies can go fully remote and not completely crash and burn, that's about it. Some people love the lack of commute and less semi-forced hanging out, some people hate onboarding on a new company as a remote person and so on and so on. Well said. At these point, anyone who suggests one is superior to the other without discussing the pros and cons of each is probably too biased to ha…

> Some people prefer in person. Some people prefer remote. Some people can’t or won’t acknowledge that their preferred style isn’t best for everyone or every company.

I think a lot of the difference is that the people who prefer remote are just asking that they be given the choice to go remote. However, many of the people who prefer in-person are also expecting everyone else to go in-person. I recognize pros and cons to both remote and in-person, and believe what is right for me might not be right for others. If you give a team of 10 the option, and 9 of them choose remote, should the 1 person who likes in-person be able to make everyone else go in-person, so he has that "in-person experience"?

Post reply on HN