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

reuters.com

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

#851

Post by james-skemp »

Hendrikto wrote: post #794
com2kid wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. My team has been able to hire people from all across the country, gaining access to talent that we normally would not have been able to reach. Because my entire company has gone fully remote, if someone on the team has to take a trip overseas, they can choose to…

I agree that working from home is great, and this is really not important, but I have to ask: > I can have someone come by and cut my cat's claws whenever need be. You have somebody else come over to cut your cat‘s claws?

> You have somebody else come over to cut your cat‘s claws?

I know a number of people that don't feel comfortable doing that, or have cats where you'd need multiple people, or to wrap them, in order to clip their nails.

I definitely don't clip as short as they do at the vet, but I have a great set of clippers, and learned that what works for our cats is to keep the clippers on my desk and clip one or two nails when they come for a midday sit on my lap.

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

#852

Post by Terretta »

underdeserver wrote: post #758
bjarneh wrote: post #715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I want to be able to quickly resolve any issues in person, not over voice call or slack.. Isn't this the main problem? I hate everyone who comes barging in and wants to "resolve issues" quickly. Not saying I love remote work, but I cannot stand working a place where people are "allowed" to disturb me. I don't even log into Slack/Teams/Skype or any of that nonsense; I don't even want to be disturbed in my virtual wo…

That's great, but I don't want to work with you, because something you're working on or something you're responsible for is blocking me and I have no way of making progress.

Local vs. global optimization …

You sure your priorities are of so much more significance than what the person is working on that they justify destroying the concentration of intellectual property creation and forcing a preemption of this other person’s task or reorder of their stack?

If you’re blocked for lack of a task switch, what are you blocking in turn by causing a new interrupt and switch?

Instead of crashing the thread they’re on, why not go to the scheduler and reorder the queue or better re-weight the threading so priorities are worked more optimally?

If in attempting that, you find you run into contention, it could be the most effective overall output is if your task is the one in an occasional wait state.

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

#853

Post by nextlevelwizard »

com2kid wrote: post #673
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…

> 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. My team has been able to hire people from all across the country, gaining access to talent that we normally would not have been able to reach. Because my entire company has gone fully remote, if someone on the team has to take a trip overseas, they can choose to…

As a opposite view:

Some team members output has severely dropped. I've seen people playing video games during work hours for example. Also work and free time has mixed to a point where people just randomly take hour or two to go skiing or for a walk and routinely just quit at the normal time.

Commuting is different in different places. For me it is 15 minute drive to the office from a neighboring smaller city where property prices are 5x lower.

I've never eaten more takeout in my life than during past 2 years. At the office I had access to healthy "home style" cooking with variety of diet. Now I have access to pizza, poor quality Chinese, and decent Indian food. Of course I could cook for myself, but I don't like cooking and I don't want to spend the time.

I'd argue my Quality of Life has gotten significantly worse especially since they closed gyms. Yes, they are now open, but there is also like a meter of snow outside so I probably won't get to the gym until spring actually starts.

I live in an apartment complex so the super has the keys to do whatever work needs to be done without my presence. I could take my deliveries at the office (and I often did since I saw clear improvement on delivery dates when they delivered to a business instead of residential address). Doctor visits were never an issue, because remote work was always an option and many people did work a day or two every week remotely.

If past experience is anything to go by I will get flooded with people saying that I should just do better and be better remote worker (like I probably shouldn't be writting this on company time) instead of acknowledging that different people are different and working at the office fits me and my life style better and that I've optimized for that lifestyle long before the pandemic hit. I personally can't wait for life to go back to normal. I'm sure we will lose some people since they want to be 100% remote and that's fine.

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

#854

Post by pclmulqdq »

IMTDb wrote: post #783
blitzar wrote: post #756

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All great for you ... but hey lets think of the little people like the shareholders of google... 257 billion in profit in 2021 (share price closed 2800), from 89 billion in 2019 (share price closed 1350). Hey look it works for them too, everyone is a winner!

What part of these profits comes from work actually done remotely during the pandemic ? What you are proving is that the Google model of hiring extremely talented devs, paying them handsomely, and asking them to spend days in their campus allowed them to create a company that takes in billion of profits even during a pandemic. Which part of the Google offer significantly changed thanks to work done during the pandemi…

Honestly, the argument you made in the first paragraph is a good argument against companies getting too big rather than against remote work: what part of Google's profit comes from work done in the last 5 years?

Most Google products and services were mature in 2017.

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

#855

Post by nextlevelwizard »

headmelted wrote: post #788
com2kid wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. My team has been able to hire people from all across the country, gaining access to talent that we normally would not have been able to reach. Because my entire company has gone fully remote, if someone on the team has to take a trip overseas, they can choose to…

To extend this, more useable time with family. For many people with younger children (and therefore early evening bedtimes), having or not having a commute is not a difference of an hour or two of your day - it's the difference between spending time with your family during the week versus not at all. I've heard this from many friends (and some family) across different industries - hardly any have wanted to stick thei…

As a counterpoint people with young children seem to spend at least some time each week during work hours taking care of their kids while their partner (whose on maternity leave) is doing something else. Also the constant background noise of kids crying or some kids show playing it pretty annoying.

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

#856

Post by nix23 »

underdeserver wrote: post #758
bjarneh wrote: post #715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I want to be able to quickly resolve any issues in person, not over voice call or slack.. Isn't this the main problem? I hate everyone who comes barging in and wants to "resolve issues" quickly. Not saying I love remote work, but I cannot stand working a place where people are "allowed" to disturb me. I don't even log into Slack/Teams/Skype or any of that nonsense; I don't even want to be disturbed in my virtual wo…

That's great, but I don't want to work with you, because something you're working on or something you're responsible for is blocking me and I have no way of making progress.

>you're working on or something you're responsible for is blocking me and I have no way of making progress

Me more important then you right?

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

#857

Post by Frost1x »

underdeserver wrote: post #758
bjarneh wrote: post #715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I want to be able to quickly resolve any issues in person, not over voice call or slack.. Isn't this the main problem? I hate everyone who comes barging in and wants to "resolve issues" quickly. Not saying I love remote work, but I cannot stand working a place where people are "allowed" to disturb me. I don't even log into Slack/Teams/Skype or any of that nonsense; I don't even want to be disturbed in my virtual wo…

That's great, but I don't want to work with you, because something you're working on or something you're responsible for is blocking me and I have no way of making progress.

Unless it's effecting your performance review or whatever, who cares, honestly? The obsession with efficiency and Taylorism is what's wrong with the current state of affairs in business.

Not saying people shouldn't want to be productive just that understanding delays and simply pyschologically dealing with them would go a long way in modern culture. Not everything needs to happen 5 minutes ago, is late, or is so critical it can't wait a few hours.

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

#858

Post by UncleMeat »

dmitrygr wrote: post #519
munificent wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

This is made somewhat misleading by insane growth. Even if there is no churn your percent is still surprisingly high because of new hires that are coming from new headcount.

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

#859

Post by matwood »

aequitas wrote: post #750
null_object wrote: post #745

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Aside from all the other advantages of WfH that have already been mentioned in this thread (like no commute, healthier eating, more fresh air and exercise, better work/life balance etc), I really don…

> 1. share screen with colleague 1 and colleague 2 Even better imho, anytime working together with more than 1 person you don't have to awkwardly huddle around the single 22" screen on your desk squinting at the code. Everyone has the shared screen in full view and can even draw on the screen (yay, no more finger smudge marks) to point at what they mean.

> (yay, no more finger smudge marks)

OMG, I've been remote so long I had forgotten about this that literally drove me nuts.

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

#860

Post by natdempk »

kbos87 wrote: post #110

I work for a large tech company based on the east coast. My partner works for another large tech company. We are both mid-level managers at companies that seem to be taking a pretty dramatically different approach. My company: - Started with a strong in-office culture - Communicated to managers that all employees now have a choice between being fully remote, hybrid, or in-office; there’s never a mandate to be in pers…

The first one is HubSpot for anyone wondering (and yes we are hiring).

I do think that companies that allow remote are going to see an influx of workers as people leave other companies with in-office mandates. So many people have adjusted to remote working that it seems somewhat crazy to me to try and walk that back. There’s a clear preference based on what we’ve seen for some level of remote work among existing in-office workers who probably aren’t going to put up with a shift back, especially when tech jobs are in such high demand.

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