At my employer we have some pockets of embarrassing leadership like this, but thankfully I haven't seen it in anyone senior enough to make global policy like this. My department is letting go of remote teams and only hiring in a handful of cities around the world, while ramping up office space spending. It's more expensive, less flexible, and less productive... and everyone knows it. But I guess it makes some people feel important, and it's how some others remember developing when they last did it 20 years ago. So it's happening anyway, and many of their best engineers are now on the market.
And I don't want to hang "with friends at work" I go to "work" that has to be specified clearly and that I expect to deliver with purely professional merit driven collaboration and not friendships and gangs.
I have friends or would love to have friends out of the place where I work. I want strict compartmentalisation between work and personal life. As the company would not want my personal friends to be hanging around the workplace for confidentiality and what not - by the same token, I don't workplace "friends" hanging out with me after office hours.
I could also surmise that in a knowledge economy, high bandwith and low latency connections are very importance, and that in-person communication are much higher bandwith and lower latency than remote.
You should consider that among the things less conducive to team productivity and mental health are "the guy in the room" types who exhibit the same lack of interest in normal social interaction with their colleagues you are claiming here under the incorrect label "professionalism".
Both of these are common scenarios at Google, though.
If any serious work is being done in a company, it does not look like that. Why do people keep pedalling this lie? A big problem in engineering is a lot of the work is done by engineers in private and the supervisors don't get to see it or experience it. So they think it happens by magic and that maybe the laughing execs actually contributed to it.
Unfortunately there's a huge amount of people employed in offices who literally do come in all day and don't do any work. Working from home means you actually have to have some work to do. What we're seeing is a load of people realising they have no work to do.
Insisting on presence is the only reason knowledge workers in western countries can claim income they have right now. Because in knowledge economy without insisting on presence, there is absolutely no reason to pay a westerner more for the same job that can be done by someone in India, China, East Europe or Africa.
Unless you can claim with a straight face that westerners are more knowledgable.
I assume it's a bit easier if you are more senior and have a few company changes on your resume, but for someone for whom its their first or second job in the industry, it can be overwhelming. I think that's why often fully remote companies pre-pandemic seemed to be more focussed on hiring seniors.
Likely some of these problems can be mitigated as we learn how to deal with them, but this is one reason why I think post-pandemic most software houses will have to adopt a policy of encouraging some on-site work.
Also keep in mind that it may be slower than with direct in person mentoring but there can also be the opposite of in person mentoring and then being locked in the same office can become extremely stressful.
I also run a small team with new hires on one day and I'm seeing great productivity and teamwork.
We are going back to the office eventually but I don't think the on-site requirements will be as strict as in the past. In the medium term I see us moving towards a more flexible model beyond just the flexible allocation of desks (which imho. is a horrible thing, pretending to be office workspace and serving neither then needs of people there nor the companies output).
My employer has always (started in 2007) been fully remote; we've never had office space ANYWHERE. It's a small team building a relatively niche product, and we're pretty successful, but what you say is true:
Getting new people up to speed is hard. And hiring "baby developers" is just not something we've done. All our hires are midcareer or later. I feel like a fresh dev needs the office environment to get traction early in their career, and we just can't provide that.
There have been plenty of companies where I thought we might have achieved more with an office.
Yes, I understand you can always improve your processes but there does feel like there are fundamental limitations with remote work.
In my experience part remote works much better, if not better than fully remote / fully office based. It's nice have a few days a week for in person meetings then some quiet time to get stuck into work at home.
I mean they must realise this is a pretty unpopular decision so why not share their justification.
Otherwise it's just an appeal to authority - "Ours not to reason why.."
But that still assumes the executives making these decisions prioritize employee well-being and work productivity. No amount of correctly collected, analyzed and understood data on WFH productivity will help if the change isn't driven by concerns about productivity. In that case, this data is just irrelevant. I believe this is the concern GP is expressing - that the goals of the management are not well aligned with the goals of the employee (which is obvious), and the well-being of the company (which is plausible).
--
[0] - I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt here to Google, at least in areas where it matters. I'm not usually giving it to a typical company, Internet or otherwise: just because you have data, doesn't mean you have the right data, have analyzed it correctly, or even employ anyone who could analyze it correctly (or employ decision makers who could understand and vet the conclusion of the people doing the analysis). In my experience, these failures are very common.
[1] - I have my doubts where it comes to their product decisions.
I'd disagree at least a little here. Google has been surveying their staff about what they want to do after the pandemic is over, see this twitter thread where Google published some of it's data: https://mobile.twitter.com/lifeatgoogle/status/1308529118531...
People are split on what they want. Maybe people could be better trained to wfh, but some of us just prefer an office. While I am likely more productive at home (even with 3 kids there) I see that knowledge sharing with a large team is just harder (missing that hallway conversation, or seeing someone at a whiteboard and just learning random things).
The vast majority prefer not to come to the office everyday. Google says you can only work from home slightly more than 1 day per month.
If they took the survey into account, it would have been the opposite - you're only required to come into the office 14 days per year.
Me, I want to go back to the office. Like hanging out with my work friends.
And is it the same for everyone? Like for HR, sales, marketing?
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...
It is also likely that we are talking about a young demographics which lacks the maturity needed to work remotely efficiently through self-control (I've been that kind 15 years ago for my first remote experience which was a disaster, but my second remote experience was opposite, extremely positive for myself and my output). I didn't pay attention to it when I started writing, but the fact that you mention "gamedev" is a good hint at this.
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.
When I see the OP comment which claims WFH is the only way and any other way to is just "backward thinking" in a very self-aggrandizing manner, I just remind myself that internet is safe haven for the type of people, whom I will rarely meet in real life.
I suspect that my employer will have us back in the office before the end of the year after a year of remote working. Although I actually sort of prefer the office myself, the whole "physically colocated" thing is especially comical in my situation (which I think is common in most big corporations) - none of the people I actually work with are in the same office, or even the same time zone, as me. So I'll drive a half hour each way to essentially be a remote worker anyway, and I definitely won't be the only one.
The cynic in me thinks that this back to office push is out of fear that it's far, far easier for remote workers to organize outside the view of the company. They are terrified and want to nip that in the bud as soon as possible.
depends on how replacible you really are.
if productivity stayed the same, no-one would have said anything.
Does it require 5 days a week? Maybe not. Is every person who believes remote work has long term negative impacts some middle manager from the 90s? No.
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 head in my home office, and everything there is to my exact specification. The whole field of modern office design should be a discredited pseudoscience; management is addicted to it because of the real estate crisis though.
This is also kind of terrible, because a lot of people use FAANG as their North star for every policy decision.
“Well Google use primary colours in their logo, Brian”
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 fun, or playing Xbox and table tennis. I mean, sure, these are nice perks, but we are being paid for the work we do, not for the fun we have. And working without being distracted by some colleagues loud music in the headphones, or the chit chat of others, or the "sorry, quick question" of some manager, improves my quality of work tremendously.
For the latter, there are times when you need to think about working, and when you're doing that, being in the office with a group of people and a whiteboard is invaluable. But at some point, you know what you need to do, you just need to get into a flow and do it. And that is near impossible in modern offices. That is especially important for engineers, but it also applies to accountants and designers and carpenters and any productive labor that isn't management.
Introvert/extrovert doesn't come into play, all productive labor needs to get into states of deep focus.
Maybe if engineers all had doors that closed, but for some damn reason we haven't had those since the 1960s.
I'm certain that there will be an outpouring of hundreds of reasons why people cannot move, and I'm sure all of those reasons have merit. But it doesn't change the fact that long commutes are a huge detriment to work/life balance.
I commute 2x 40-50 minutes plus if I work at the office I have a forced 1h break, so around a little bit less than three hours of life have been given back to me during remote work. I understand your sentiment and I share it completely. I am now able to run errands, exercise, nap, clean the house, play video games, or work in my garage during this found again time. I often feel shy to admit that the pandemic-induced shift to remote work has given me back a lot. My boss lives a 5 minutes walk away and will never ever understand what it means to have to commute every day.
I don't know how others feel, but I am not outgoing enough to use the foosball and pingpong tables that are common in development studios, I feel so judged; so those are (for me) not perks at all.
I try not to build too much of an us-vs-them philosophy into either the site design or the marketing message, but I hope to soon have an XHR-type feature where the hiring manager instantly sees the effect that each piece of job metadata (remote work-ability, interview format, etc.) has on their prospective candidate pool as they enter the job info.
I think this could send a useful signal upstream to the industry at large.
You can see all of the filterable attributes by directly visiting https://sievejobs.com/job-seeker
And I'd love to hear any feedback that anyone might have.
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.
Please don't talk for all of us. If you're miserable in the office that's fine, but it's noones duty to support your preferences. This is why we have this amazing free market - everyone can work at a company that respects their preferences.
In the same way working 60-80hrs a week will start being more productive at the start but eventually burn most people out, at least for me and people like me, not hanging out with others will do the same thing.
It's a balance for me. Too little direct interaction, short breaks, sharing lunches, having non-work related conversations, will end up decreasing my over all productivity.
You're welcome to WFH but I personally hope you're in the minority because if no one but me goes to the office then it's just as bad as WFH for me.
Also I feel for the people who's work was supporting workers in, y'know, work. I no longer live there, but even a crappy day in London for me was brightened by the countless interactions with people, the guy in the magazine shop, a new hipster pop up cafe, the street vendors selling exciting new food. Will they work from home?
I think one of the major challenges for an organisation is how to get peak performance from a diverse team (in terms of life circumstances and personality) and still maintain one culture and a ‘team mind’ where everyone is safe and content with their work.
I’m not a WFH evangelist really: remote is just another modality, with its own costs and benefits. It just doesn’t seem to get a fair hearing in a lot of places.
This is my exact complaint, even in the Marine Corps. All of our senior leadership are charismatic extroverts. They are trying to adapt "distributed command & control" because they recognize that large management nodes are easy to spot and kill. But they still insist on all forms of concentrated workspaces, in-person meetings, video teleconferences, etc... We have the technology, but it will never be fully embraced because it is fundamentally anathema to the character of our decision-makers.
Personally I tend toward introvert (it's not black and white) and have experience with working from home before the pandemic. For someone who's starting working from home it's easy to fall into a pattern of self-isolation which will have a negative psychological effect on them. I'm convinced that most people need at least a couple of days per week of social office time for their own sanity.
"spending time with family" - no, I'm single and alone and so are most of my co-workers
"living in a nicer / cheaper location" - no, my office is nicer than my home and same for most of my co-workers.
Your situation and needs are different than mine apparently.
"A couple" can mean anything from two to full week. I can assure you that at least for some people one day is enough.
Typically, as a contract consultant, working onsite would have me provided a 13" cheap crap-top (my personal laptop has 32gb of RAM and 2tb of SSD in a RAID config), and then stick me in the worst "half-cubicle/half-storage/supply closet" that none of their employees would ever sit in.
Even then, there would be a non-stop stream of people dropping by, and/or "shoulder-taps".
And I am a weird introvert/extrovert - so I love in-person meetings, whiteboarding and training/speaking sessions. But I also love the quiet, uninterrupted time in a decent work environment to actually... "get stuff done".
As for "The pandemic-driven remote working is hell for some people, and unfortunately they call the shots.", one might want to ponder _why_ the extroverts got into a position where they're calling the shots. Mastering the art of human interaction is important, even for introverts.
While extroverts are overrepresented in management, I think a bigger issue is that people who overvalue physical proximity as a tool for establishing/maintaining control (both of formal subordinates and otherwise) are overrepresented in management. You don’t have to be an extrovert to be cargo culting Management By Walking Around (if you aren’t cargo-culting, you can probably adapt it to a remote environment) or to have developed and lean heavily on communication techniques (non-verbal, especially) that work better for dominating meetings in=person.
Honestly, I think introverts who have spent time crafting a particular set of tools for surviving as managers are at least as dangerous here here as extroverts.
For a knowledge worker where they need to concentrate there needs to be a quiet distraction free environment without interruptions. If this is at home in a separate low-traffic room or in an office with few people and a door that can be closed , both will work well. However I don't think many people's environments are like that in either place.
So to me there's no difference between working at home or the office, if you're going to have people interrupting you, high levels of background noise, and other visual/scheduling distractions.
LOL, thanks for the laugh! :-)
Majority rule :-)
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.
For you maybe. For some of us, the office is like a monastery compared to home and is the only place where deep work is even close to possible. As we return to normal, I hope more employers embrace a hybrid approach that allows everyone to thrive.
And yet in my home it's accurate. Of course, your mileage may vary.
Where I work, it's like a library. Quiet, serene, productive, but tense.
At home it's noisy, disjointed, non-productive [hey look, I'm on HN!], and full of disruptions [slack, 5+ zoom meetings per day, kids screaming [Brother keeps hitting me!!!], and wife trying to live her life [TV, music, etc...]. But it's relaxed.
I prefer working from home, I feel like it's better, but there is a lot that can be improved.
And thus a veneer of legitimacy curtails the otherwise dragging distraction of guilt.
Most of the world is not like that. For example[1], avg apartment size in Bangalore 1260 sqft and in Mumbai is 700 sqft. Most of the knowledge workers live in dense cities around the world and it is not feasible for them to move to the US suburbia.
[1] https://realty.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/residential...
And it looks exactly like other non-productive things at work: in my morning standup i can say: " i got pulled into a meeting about 'random irrelevant issue' so thats my day"
'Home distraction' are considered slacking
I've been remote for ~5 years now, and making friends as an adult, esp. in a new city or location, isn't easy.
But you're right, when you're remote you have to make an effort to build social bridges yourself. That's impossible, or at least greatly strained, during COVID.
I will humbly raise my hand and admit to this.
As someone who has so far really enjoyed the lifestyle benefits of WFH but has struggled with this, what advice/tips/strategies/recommendations can you or other senior remote engineers provide on how to improve this specific aspect?
My life improved so much since working from a co-working. I looked for a place that shared my work/life style and I've made friends, we share lunch, we've gone on trips, we usually share a friday drink, etc. And since everyone works on different things and/or companies it's quite interesting as well to get some other input that's not just work colleagues.
I also looked for a place 2min from my house so I still have most of the benefits of WFH
That said, self motivation and lack of external pressure can be a problem. When I feel I have a hard time to focus on something my last resort is the pomodoro timer. I sit down, set a timer at 25 minutes and force myself to no break focus during that time. Once the first period is over it's usually no problem to keep going since I've gotten into something by then.
Aside from the obvious (wear headphones, keep work area away from common areas) something else we did was set a boundary limit. If I was in the bedroom, that was now the “office” and was to be treated as such. This one is more personal but I tended to get too annoyed at the interruptions at first without realizing that I needed to make more effort to help and not be (to put it bluntly) a dick about it. My girlfriend started getting in the habit of tidying up or doing crafts during her downtime instead of coming to me after we discussed the huge amount of distraction it caused.
Ultimately though the living situation is what made it hard. We were in San Diego, in a cramped two bedroom apartment that had no privacy. We moved and bought a house where I now have a large upstairs loft area as my office. That is absolutely not the answer to everything but I think some of the issue is just most people not being prepared or having the right accommodations.
My advice sucks but if you have any specifics I can try to help out and answer more. It’s hard but hang in there if you feel it’s just a rough spot.
It's "our time starts at 5pm, dinner, and the rest of the evening".
Lunchtime walks together works for me too.
2 a light outside the door or a sock on the door let’s people know you cannot be disturbed
3 don’t forget to open the door when you can legitimately be disturbed
4 calmly and clearly state that you are at work while door is locked/light is on/sock is on the door. Compare to partner being at work/school and you being unable to barge in
5 meditate because this won’t be resolved over night
Like you it took threatening to leave (renting an office space and working from there. She was not fond of throwing out $1200/mo) for my wife to take it seriously. I have been working remotely for almost a decade now but over the last 3 years my wife stopped taking it seriously. The pandemic seems to have driven the fact home (esp when our little one would disturb her while she was working)
You must realize working remotely is not common and with any new lifestyle change there will be adaption periods. Some people longer than others. The ultimatum usually gets their attention but not always the way you would like (my wife refuses to enter the office now, which is also not what I want but baby steps)
In other words, respect your own boundaries first. That goes a long way towards helping other people recognize the same boundaries.
You may want to come to an agreement on questions like:
- What is work time? How will my partner know?
- Are there any scheduled breaks?
- Are there any moments during work time when it is ok to come disturb?
- What is an acceptable urgent reason to disturb work time?
- ...
... says the person who is still disorganised about this after an entire year of covid-19.
Or perhaps because I've spent a month over the last quarter effectively under house arrest to comply with local quarantine laws?
It is hardly as clear to me as your post makes it out to be that the din of an office, packed with people sitting at the now industry standard four foot desk with no separation of any kind between them, is quieter than my home.
I'm not sure that's how I'd put it but the alone-ness is a real problem for many people but I don't see how some new startup is going to solve that problem.
I’ve been putting real effort into this: I dumped social media years ago, so now I just message someone individually if I want to talk to them. I’ve really focused on 1-on-1 friendships versus “group friends”. I don’t have the same friends as all my friends, and that’s ok (and makes for more interesting parties).
The problem is that this type of engagement detracts from your available attention share, so social media actively discourages it. Instead they want you to be a lonely voice shouting into the void hoping someone will notice you. That’s not a great life.
Most people who lack the motivation to work without external pressure are in it only because they need to do even the most menial "bullshit job" to survive: "a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case."
> Most people feel alone because they lack the social skills to make friends outside work
It's hard to have time for making friends when you waste 8 hours of your day on work, another half to whole hour on lunch break, another one and a half on commuting and eight hours on sleep - that leaves only six "free" hours a day of which then go one hour for eating (breakfast+dinner), one hour for personal hygiene (shower, toilet visits), half an hour to an hour for house work (cleaning, maintenance)... suddenly you're left with only three "leisure" hours, and that assumes a decent work commute in the first place. Weekends are often enough used for recovering from a stressful work week and shopping groceries.
Add in kids to the mix and it's no surprise that for many people, work is the only place they can reasonably form social connections during the week.
We need to get rid of excessive commutes, we need to get rid of the 8 hour work day in favor of a 5-6 hour work day, and especially we need to get rid of "bullshit jobs" that add additional mental stress.
These are supposedly hard working, intelligent, highly motivated and highly educated and highly paid staff.
Yet they can’t even give them a few days a month to work from home. 14 days a year is totally incongruous.
Of course they do understand that 'daddy' is working and don't call out for me when on meetings but no special training needed in my opinion.
I could do a day here or there for team-building activities or major meetings, but that's pretty much the extent I'd be willing to do.
Granted, this is based on having a 40-minutes train commute (each way, so 80 minutes/day), but unless I could have a 10 minute walk or bike commute I don't think my opinion would materially change, and that's pretty unlikely where I live due to downtown property/rent prices (Tokyo).
Gives both the "short commute" benefit of work-from-home, as well as the "maintaining a clear separation between home and work" benefit of on-location-work.
And for me personally (as an introvert), it was fantastic to have people around that I could talk to socially, but who weren't directly involved in my work and who weren't going to make demands of me. Totally removed the feelings of isolation, and formed a bunch of new friendships that didn't rest on obligations to my employer.
FWIW, before the pandemic started, I was not enthusiastic at all about WFH, for various reasons but mostly because I live in a small one room apartment (quite usual here in the inner city in Tokyo). Now, after addressing basic issues to improve the ergonomics of my home office, most of the downsides are gone, and those that remain are outweighed by the prospect of commuting again. Of course, this could easily change if I moved closer to the office (or switched jobs to be physically closer), but considering rent close to the typical business hubs here, that's unattractive financially.
As for isolation: personally, I do a lot of pair programming (whether in the office or remotely), so I don't actually feel isolated at all. If would describe myself as mildly introvert, so YMMV, but I feel like I need to disconnect from people after a day of remote work no more or less than after a regular day at the office.
i wonder if people who feel this way aren't getting socializing done outside of work, and is using work as a form of socialization?
I used to work remotely for a different continent + 9 hours diff timezone and that was as painful as it can get: different hours for meetings, not knowing anything about my coworkers was really exhausting
But with the ability to go back to the office only when I need to and focus on my work much better at home, I don't think I'd ever want to go back anytime soon
Makes me realize that butts-in-seats vs. commute distance are equally valid, but somewhat separate considerations.
former engineers - that is, they no longer want to be an engineer, but chose the management path. It's quite likely that engineering work is merely a stepping stone for someone like that who intends to advance their career in the management track. I would expect an over-representation of extroverts in this category.
Introverted engineers remain engineers because they like the work, and are only forced out when the pay no longer match their output (but can not move up any more due to the engineering track being "ceiling" compared to the management track).
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."
Source: I am an employee
Read any article from the likes of HBR from 2019 and it's apparent that much, much research shows that offices, and open offices in particular are toxic for productivity - and that the 'water cooler' collaboration effect has been vastly overstated.
Sometimes in an open office you could go several hours without getting anything done at all because someone had decided to hold an impromptu meeting by your desk. And irony of all ironies - you put your headphones in at a loud enough volume to drown out the noise and then get tapped on the shoulder for 'distracting' people.
Fast forward a year and a half and the 'water cooler' myth seems to be accepted as fact, and none of the business press seems to mention at all the harmful effects of open offices on productivity. It's not like good ideas ever came from those interactions - they tended to produce the half baked ideas, and definitely didn't produce the x-functional alignment it actually takes to get anything done in most orgs.
The switching cost of interruption - or even the fear that you could at any moment be interrupted - is a complete inhibitor to deep work. My only hope is that when people are inevitably forced back into the office, people will be able to be more productive because of 40% fewer people being in them.
I know WFH has been fine, even positive, for some people. For a lot of us it has been a disaster and it seems that Google determined that it is a net negative.
NormaL WFH under normal conditions looks very different for most, and in many aspects.
This happened without much time to prepare for one thing (e.g. suboptimal desk/office setup), and while everyone else was stuck at home with you, for another.
Don’t try to compare WFH during COVID with WFH when kids are back in school/daycare, and we’re not locked down at home trying to stay healthy.
Or in other words; negative drivers to productivity are not related as closely to locale as previously thought.
Personally, I'm at a small data company, and we're opening a new office for people where WFH is a burden (NYC apartments and all), but is so far voluntary. In fact, I think there are only seats for less than 1/3 of the company. I've been really impressed with how smoothly everyone shifted to all zoom all the time mode, and honestly, my small conference room meetings have been more productive the last year.
The fact that Google's offices are often referred to as "campuses" rather than "offices" drives that point home as well.
This. I find it an odd term to use for what is essentially a workplace.
The modern meaning of "Campus" seems to have drifted from a location with multiple facilities where one could actually live, to office with table tennis and free meal facilities.
I don't quite understand why you'd expect them to be on the forefront of WFH.
Amazon updates remote work guidance, plans to ‘return to an office-centric culture as our baseline’
https://www.geekwire.com/2021/amazon-updates-remote-work-gui...
oof.
It’s the same as “if you don’t like it here and don’t mind not having a roof over your head, you’re free to quit and go work somewhere else with better conditions”. It’s not as dramatic in SE because we’re in demand but it’s still not trivial to do everywhere. And it’s even worse for less in demand jobs.
Or most likely, employees who will accept to commute for the salary that Google offers.
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.
On the other hand, for many of us who do have significant non work passions (rock climbing for me) as well as social circles around these activities appreciate remote work because it allows us to structure our lives in a way where such activities coexist with work more easily.
The interesting thing is that for work centered people, remote work has reduced social connections, while for more interdisciplinary folks it can do the opposite.
I have personally worked 100% remote for 7 years now, but before that I lived and worked in San Fransisco. I never attended a Friday night work happy hour because every Friday night I would be in the car driving 4 hours to go climbing in Yosemite.
Now, I can work remotely from a town with great outdoor access and spend my Friday nights hanging around with local friends instead instead of in the car.
Remote work has allowed me to have a more balanced life filled with more things I want to do and less I don't. Have the years of video meetings made my professional career less productive? Perhaps, but I have still worked on plenty of cool projects with plenty of great folks along the way. Some of them have even become close friends. And even if it has suffered, its been worth it!
I thought I had to be in an office for this as well then discovered this entire room in my apartment full of mostly unassembled food.
I think the best balance is at least a couple days per week in the office and the rest remote.
Being able to talk to others in person and quickly is certainly useful, but its a double edged sword as that quite often results in your stream of thoughts being disrupted and focus gone in a flash. This is one of the reasons I love WFH as a developer. I can get right into my zone and focus on solving problems or being creative without someone walking up to my desk to ask if I read the email they sent me.
When everyone is fully remote, you should always reach them quickly by dropping a chat, but when they are offline they tend to be stuck in meetings
The entire concept of workplaces, how they are run, and what people do is created by the normal person and for the normal person. This is completely irrespective and often counter to what produces the best outcome. It is about the social needs of these people, not the needs of the product.
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 via coffee chats, launch meets, ad-hoc talks, but those are all gone. You know, a lot of cases, whether you know someone in the other team matters a lot. I don't have a word to describe it precisely, maybe "lower team coherency".
3. Really bad work-life balance in general. When busy and everyone's WFH, boundary between work and life really got blurred. There's nothing like "gotta go, chat tomorrow" stuff.
Those are things may not be easily tracked from data, but really harmful in the long run. I cannot imagine how to manage effectively after another year of WFH.
I, for one, hated the densification and tight working environments, but I didn't have the "data" to make a hill of beans difference.
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.
I don’t work their anymore
The 3-in-office/2-at-home week referenced would work well in this regard.
That was Google. No longer.
Xoogler (2012-2019)
I like work from home and get to focus more effectively than the open office. I’m pretty deep on the introvert side of the scale and this pandemic has been too isolating for even me. Which is to say I don’t think work from home should be removed because most everyone is socially needy now. I’m looking forward to being with friends again. But I do not want to go back to working in the office. I’m hoping my work has max one required office day for meetings a week, but not more, and hopefully less.
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.
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.
And then there’s the middle manager aspect.
Google made these offices with the idea to make people feel like the office is “home”. Snacks, food, bring your dog, etc all screams “why go home when you have everything here?”
The cynic in me believes that is exactly their aim, to keep people at the office longer and middle manage.
That said, I do believe that a lot of people have a hard time not working in an office. These people should still have the choice, though, and these offices should not feel like home. Because it isn’t.
But this is still something that many companies will take advantage of; it simply costs less to not rent an office. Yes, they should also pay for part of the rent and internet bills for the employee, but it would still cost less than renting a huge building. Especially in Silicon Valley.
I’ve heard this theory as maximizing the odds of such a lucky conversation. Increasing the innovation “surface area” by having more people having more chance encounters.
There’s probably other reasons to it too, but there’s also reason to believe that same type of innovation doesn’t happen as readily online.
It’s the same theory why industries tend to cluster in certain areas; not just access to a pool of ready-trained employees but also a thriving innovation scene due to the proximity of all those experienced, motivated people.
I was put in a row of desks literally next to the open kitchen/conversation area. My day had constant distractions and I had no control over how I wanted my work environment to be.
Working from home, I'm incredibly comfortable AND productive. The noise level, lighting, etc are all how I choose them. I dont have this tension around other people getting to decide for me how I want to work.
If you work in a FAANG type of office environment, the above probably doesn't apply to you. Your office is professionally designed and cost many millions of dollars. You are given high quality equipment to make you comfortable. Your office has amenities that make being there easier.
My house is nice, and is custom-tailored to me. The amenities are exactly the amenities I want and use. The equipment is exactly what I want, not equipment that a distant person contracted out to a firm to mass produce for a general office.
I understand that not every person is in a situation like this, but if you're working at a FAANG you should be making enough money to set up your living situation nicely.
People should have the -option- to come into an office. Working at home gets lonely. But there is no reason that a FAANG is necessarily better or even good at providing an optimal work environment.
It makes sure that people who are aligned with new ways of working have less reasons to work there. It also sends a strong signal the PHBs have taken over.
Thanks for letting me know, so I know not to apply.
Before the pandemic I used to goto work and not do shit. Wake up early on one or two days and do my work.
It’s the same exact routine except now I have to pretend in the office when I could just be napping and doing better work later.
:shrugs:
I’ll find a way around whatever bullshit the suits come up with.
-- WHAT? They need to apply for that?
Don't get me wrong: I like to drive "somewhere" on the weekend or visit family and friends, but for that, an older car would be fine enough. Heck, I could even persue my dream of a convertible. I just own a decent car to have a reliable way to get to work. Every. Day.
Things might change for me moving forward.
IBM expects >80% of their employees to be spending at least 3 days per week in the office post-pandemic. Parents will be allowed to continue to WFH until schools re-open in September. And they're labeling THIS as a "hybrid model".
a) I'm interrupted at home. Communicate, talk to your kids and rest of the family (works from ages 4 and up, before then you need to agree for a partner/caretaker to handle kids) and let them know there are times they can't interrupt you but the key here is: offer times where they can! You can't expect to be left alone 8 hours a day in a row in this new arrangement.
b) I can't work without pressure. Communicate, talk to your teammates and have a virtual room where you just work, without talking unless there's a question. There's also focusmate.com if you are afraid of your coworkers. Also, create a routine for yourself. Be unafraid of asking for help.
c) I don't have friends or family. Will an office really change that? I know that the friends I made working at an office I still have, and that I've made friends working remotely too. As well as having the friends I made when young.
Finally, many workplaces are not enabling workers to be successful remotely, becuase they don't know how to or they don't want to. You need to encourage async, reduce (not increase!) meetings, and offer more freedom to accommodate for the above.
It's easier to think of Google as good when you face your coworkers, but when they are behind avatars and just text, it's easier to fall for the propaganda of the NYT et.al
"But they don't have to pay for office space". Sure, but you're totally discounting the amount of power that they gain by having control of your physical body. I get to tell you where to be, when to be there, and what to do. I have cameras and badges to verify you're there. You're also physically close so you're buying a house with a mortgage, putting your kids in school. If I fire you your only choice is something within a 100mi radius. I'm a member of local business groups so there's a good chance I know where you're going and maybe even play golf with the companies CEO. You better not burn any bridges on your way out or I might shake my head and make a face when I mention your name on the back nine.
I guarantee you that some people will be allowed to work from home. Others won't. Right now they're busily working to determine which ones those will be where it's best for them. The outcome will be you'll always get the worst deal. The ones that are fungible and I can cut costs to the bone? Sure work from home. The ones that I need a little more leverage with? You're coming into the office. I'll even buy a foosball table and put some snacks in the kitchen if it makes you feel better.
I don't really give a shit if you go across town. They take my people, I take yours. The point is your ours and we trade you as we see fit. Think I'm being dramatic. Think again https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/24/apple-goo...
You must live somewhere with the highest cost of living.
Working on software that intentionally isolates and manipulates people
And now you don't even get to work from your overpriced home.
I'm sure there won't be a retention problem,
It’s also not in the least different from pre-pandemic, and there wasn’t much of a retention problem then, either, as far as I know.
There’s also plenty of offices in places that don’t have the very highest cost of living, and Google committed to expanding those as well.
Managing salaried employees by optimizing their productivity as hourly labourers is essentially abuse.
The secret is to always maintain an opportunity funnel and a pipeline of potential job opportunities that you can convert into interviews or jobs within a few weeks.
Over time (1) and (3) could see compensation easily halve as supply of developers becomes more easily globalized
Our administration needs to pass legislation to prevent companies from forcing people back into offices. This is rediculous.
offices are fine (though not required). travelling for > 15-20 mins to and from work is what sucks the most.
we need local office hubs. work around your local community for your employer near your home.
There’s also the issue many people have of not being able to do deep work in a busy open plan office.
Presumably the increasing availability of vaccines factors into it, lots of new information between Nov 1. and the last few weeks.
Fourteen days a year seems pretty limited--weren't Googler's working from home more often than that before the pandemic?
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 of each company. You will chose a company based on your desire to become close friends with your colleagues or live a great life outside the office.
The communication breakdowns are constant. Previously you'd absorb information through osmosis, but the watercooler chat about projects and upcoming initiatives has outright stopped.
If in person meetings are 10 in terms of information bandwidth, video calls are less than 6. They're just terrible. Oh, I accidentally interrupted someone yet again because of lag despite us all having fiber internet. Amazing.
We have many offices in offices in different timezones, and remote-only helped cross office collaboration.
Also, the company is open floor plan, which is well-known to be productivity minimizing.
On top of that, we’re pathologically meeting-heavy (“Don’t write it down or send an email. Schedule a meeting instead.” is part of new-hire training.)
If I weren’t under NDA, and I had business school contacts, I’d try to write this up as a case study.
My philosophy on it is that management is key. If butts-in-seats gives management the illusion of productivity then they will likely find out they are dead wrong. You can practically objectively measure productivity with remote work. Collaboration is more challenging and therefore surfaces many efficiencies you can make in your process.
https://www.pwc.com/us/en/library/covid-19/us-remote-work-su...
I will grant you that multi-person video meetings are subpar. Which is a blessing, because now we have smaller meetings.
