61–70 of 623 posts
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."
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.
"Couple days per week in the office" kind of defeats the whole point of going remote in the first place.
Sure, it doesn't allow other things like working from a beach somewhere in Spain. But it's a compromise that keeps many benefits from both solutions.
After spending more than a year remote, full remote is difficult ( not impossible ) . Most of us have settled on 3 days at home, 2 days at work, so we can socialize, make new connections or just simply have lunch. Going back to in office 100% is a thing of the past unless you are a team that has to be there - making hardware etc. For ex I cant imagine the Pixel team working 100% remote.
I'm a senior manager and also a hardcore introvert. In my many years of office work I would actively avoid having lunch around anyone from the office as much as possible. Lunch is my only alone time when I'm crammed in an office all day.
The typical googler is a 20 or 30-something that has close to zero life interest outside work. I would not expect them to want to stay remote as their social life revolves around Google. Sadly, from what I have seen most people with a good work life balance want to stay remote while people with few other life interests want absolutely go back to work. I predict that in a couple years this will be part of the culture…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If that was really the case Google would just sell all these. Do you understand how costly it is to maintain offices?
I worked at a place with a historic, beautiful, downtown office. It was great ... for a while. Then they expanded but the location could not. My enjoyment dropped rapidly once we were five to a desk. The question of remote work came up and upper management was heavily invested in on site ICs. And this around the time they promoted some semi-remote folks to be our managers. It was weird. Possibly some trust issues fro…
There was no budget for me to visit them at the office so all in all I saw them in person twice. Not twice a month or even twice a year. Twice. Total.
It takes a lot of practice to get good at effective emails in place of face to face conversations.
I actually tended to email my immediate boss my questions. With my eyesight issues or whatever, I seemed incapable of figuring out how to show up at her cubicle with good timing like other people routinely did.
When I and two other people on my team were moved to a newly created troubleshooting team but kept the same technical lead, my work life hardly changed. I continued mostly emailing my questions and getting what I needed.
My two coworkers who had been dependent on being able to talk with her face to face were blowing a gasket now that their desks were too far from hers to conveniently slip into her cubicle like they were used to doing.
I can handle remote work. I've spent a lot of time doing things online for a lot of years.
But I'm not surprised that it's been a tough work year for most people and productivity seems to have generally been down. Working remotely takes a different skill set and many people simply don't have it, even people who work at a computer all day.
The title and article feel slightly misleading. It is allowing some offices to have people who want to come back early, come back. It is sticking by its commitment of allowing WFH until September and looking at hybrid models for after. Personally, a hybrid model seems ideal to me. I dislike remote full time.
That’s the real news for me. After the pandemic is over Google will go back to a full-onsite team.
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.
That's interesting, since my assumption is that Google would be fairly data driven. I'd be curious if Googlers feel like this is because they are really seeing reduced productivity, or if there's a different motivation.
Disclaimer: Googler managing a small product engineering team. I have to say WFH has a considerable impact on productivity. Coding is actually fine, but the problems are: 1. Designing over VC is very difficult, especially for something entirely new. 3~4 people working on a single whiteboard is far more efficient. 2. Personal relationships are difficult to grow, especially for newbies. Usually those things got grown v…