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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

#81

Post by swat535 »

clpm4j wrote: post #64
rainyMammoth wrote: post #52

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…

I'd actually say the typical Googler is a 30 or 40-something married person with a kid or two.

If you're 30-40 married with kids, you don't have the time to do leetcode for 6 months to pass the interviews..

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

#82

Post by grillvogel »

rainyMammoth wrote: post #78
gher-shyu3i wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you balance being a manager, a position that requires heavily dealing and engaging with people, with being an introvert?

I am an introvert and absolutely hate group behaviors and nonsensical smalltalk around lunch time. However I have no issue being a manager and talking to people on 1:1s or with a clean agenda and subject to discuss.

>hate group behaviors and nonsensical smalltalk around lunch time.

honestly im not sure how you can do well as a manager without some tolerance for that kind of thing

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

#83

Post by CharlesW »

clpm4j wrote: post #64
rainyMammoth wrote: post #52

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…

I'd actually say the typical Googler is a 30 or 40-something married person with a kid or two.

A quick Google search shows the average age was 30 in 2017.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/patriciagbarnes/2019/07/20/deja...

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

#85

Post by vlovich123 »

swat535 wrote: post #81
clpm4j wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd actually say the typical Googler is a 30 or 40-something married person with a kid or two.

If you're 30-40 married with kids, you don't have the time to do leetcode for 6 months to pass the interviews..

Granted I didn't ask if that was standard interview prep for them prior to interviewing, so this is partly my own biases filtering through, but I didn't get the sense that the seasoned 30-40 yold engineers were on leetcode for 6 months to pass interviews. I'm not saying none of them do that, but I found the Google interview process pretty standard fare for any place that has a similar quality bar.

I remember my interviews with Google & Facebook as a new grad & they felt far more grueling than as a senior engineer (that & 10 years ago they were still asking those brain teasers like find the voltage between two points of an infinite lattice circuit).

At this stage in my career, I've found the interview questions are all about how to design large pieces of software with the coding aspect being a smaller piece of the pie to make sure I'm not BS'ing.

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

#86

Post by rodgerd »

lmilcin wrote: post #34
justaguy88 wrote: post #28

"I spent all this money on offices, better force the minions to sit in them"

If that was really the case Google would just sell all these. Do you understand how costly it is to maintain offices?

You act as though people are rational actors.

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

#87

Post by skybrian »

swat535 wrote: post #81
clpm4j wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd actually say the typical Googler is a 30 or 40-something married person with a kid or two.

If you're 30-40 married with kids, you don't have the time to do leetcode for 6 months to pass the interviews..

Google has over a hundred thousand employees so discussing stereotypes isn't all that useful.

For example, maybe you got in before you had a kid? Also, you don't necessarily need to study that much to pass the interview.

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

#88

Post by rodgerd »

humanrebar wrote: post #47
azurezyq wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>...whether you know someone in the other team matters a lot... I was kind of hoping the remote work experience would help folks make that sort of inside baseball less important. There are real equity concerns to consider, but practically speaking, you end up with narrower and less open decision-making processes in general. It's definitely a complicated subject, but maybe some folks are partly missing some privilege…

This was an area that improved hugely at my workplace, because we're spread across multiple buildings in multiple cities anyway; the pre-COVID dynamic was that people were in the habit of including only those in physical proximity. COVID has made cross-city collab instinctive for people.

The comment you're responding to sounds like a team resenting the inability to have the (bad) habit of only talking to people in physical proximity.

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

#89

Post by xur17 »

ryandrake wrote: post #77
maxerickson wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are opening the offices earlier in the year than they had planned. Presumably the increasing availability of vaccines factors into it, lots of new information between Nov 1. and the last few weeks.

It seems foolish to rush things as cases are once again back on the rise, which means deaths will likely be rising in about 2 weeks. And why are cases on the rise? Because people are, once again, pretending we are getting back to normal and going back to their old germ transmission daily life. How many times do we need to go through this Grand Opening / Grand Closing cycle before we learn?

I'm guessing they are looking forward to the point at which "everyone that wants a vaccine can get one", at which point safely opening an office building should be doable.

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

#90

Post by dividefuel »

tyingq wrote: post #4

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.

(Googler, opinions are my own) I don't think Google has really justified why the return to the office is necessary for all employees, beyond saying that it's a key part of the culture.

Obviously the office is a part of the culture, and most employees want to be in the office at least some of the time. But to me, that doesn't explain why you can't offer a remote option for the employees who want it.

A charitable explanation might be what we've heard from execs: we don't want to rush to go remote, we'd like to dip our toes in and slowly explore broader options. Thus the hybrid 3/2 model. A less charitable explanation might be that Google has spent a lot of money on real estate. Or simply that leadership is out of touch and can't relate to the reasons why employees might want to be remote. I imagine it's a mix of both types of explanations.

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