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Google, Facebook make statements to staff about working from home for 2020

154 points by ericzawo 6y ago

stuff4ben 6y ago
I've been WFH since March 3rd due to a persistent cough I had from a cold I had the previous week. I really need to replace my recliner as my workspace...
- DabbyDabberson 6y ago
  I've purchased a desk and workstation... But I'm still typically on the couch with my laptop. Its difficult.
  - vorpalhex 6y ago
    If you can setup a dedicated work area, even if it's temporary, do it and restrict work to that space. That means you only use that space for work, and don't use the rest of your home. Your sofa is for relaxing, don't let work ruin a perfectly good sofa. CCP Grey [^1] has an excellent video on this. [^1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snAhsXyO3Ck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snAhsXyO3Ck (Video warning)
    - Operyl 6y ago
      I literally cannot stress how important this is. It's all fun and games until you're working from your bed, and then find that you can not stop thinking in bed and then never fall asleep. ~ Signed, someone working from home full time for the past 6 years.
ghaff 6y ago
The headline overstates the body of the article a bit although it's not really inaccurate. It is an interesting question to ask, come fall or winter, whether--if plenty at some companies can work from home and life/productivity goes on for much of a year--what does office life look like going forward? Most companies will still have offices but I wonder if things shift to more of a hoteling type system with conference rooms and other collaboration spaces with people coming in a couple days per week or so.
- xwdv 6y ago
  As WFH becomes the norm, office life will become shittier over time. Less budgeting will go into fancy offices, they will become more spartan unassuming buildings. People who have to go to offices to work will be seen as second class citizens too poor or too unequipped to do any work from home. They will be seen as slow, old school workers who become more of a liability for workplace harassment policies or accidents. If you have an excellent home with a great internet connection then why go to a dirty, nasty, public office where you sit in an uncomfortable chair using cheap equipment and even risk being groped in a hallway or break room? Not to mention the risk of being killed along your commute twice a day. All while the remote workers sit gently in their favorite spot by the warm glow of a sunlit window, quietly getting tasks done as they listen to soft music coming from their home speakers. When the workday ends the office worker has to make a mad rush and brave traffic to get home. The remote worker can end the day whenever the time is right, with all the ceremony of an index finger bringing their laptop lid down to a close; what’s for dinner honey? Very few people will choose to go to an office, working from home is a status symbol and a sign of being a well educated knowledge worker. This is even the case now during the pandemic where plenty of people boast they would be fine staying home all year while the poor and destitute are begging to go back to an office or worksite because it’s the only way they can put food on the table. Their value is mostly in their physical bodies, not their pure knowledge. And if you can’t work from home, you’ll choose to work from some communal workspace or cafe of your choosing before ever choosing to make a dreaded commute to an office.
  - GhettoMaestro 6y ago
    Yeah this is a fantasy for introverts and hermits. This will not happen. The world is run by Chads, who are by nature extroverted.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    You're overstating it. I gave up a dedicated space in my local office before all this. But I'd be happy to go in a day or two a week if there were good reasons to do so. But most of my team is very distributed and (during normal times) most of us travel a lot so there aren't going to be a lot of serendipitous encounters. What is probably true is that those who thrive with office socializing and activities will find the norm at companies where coming into an office becomes more about having scheduled team meetings and collaborative work on specific days less pleasant than in the past.
twblalock 6y ago
Some of this is due to local coronavirus lockdowns and the uncertainty around when they will be lifted, but there is also uncertainty about when schools and day cares will open again. Providing child care will keep a lot of people at home even if they aren't required to be. On top of that, a lot of people won't want to go back to the office, not because they enjoy working from home, but because they will still be afraid of getting the virus. Being at the office probably won't feel normal anyway due to continued social distancing and the use of masks. Combine that with concerns that the virus may surge again in the Fall, maybe necessitating another lockdown, and you have a recipe for working at home much longer than what might be legally required.
- drspacemonkey 6y ago
  >On top of that, a lot of people won't want to go back to the office, not because they enjoy working from home, but because they will still be afraid of getting the virus. Being at the office probably won't feel normal anyway due to continued social distancing and the use of masks That's where I'm at. My workplace put out a survey to see how people felt about going back to the office next month, and I don't think anyone was willing to risk it. We'd be wearing masks, taking public transit to/from the office, and sanitizing our hands every 15 minutes. Having spoken to some management people, this survey is mostly being done just to confirm that we should discuss getting rid of the office entirely. Which would be a huge cost saving for us.
  - meesles 6y ago
    Same discussion happening at my company. Makes me wonder if office real estate is going to crash and burn...
    - cheez 6y ago
      yes it is
- znpy 6y ago
  One of my colleagues told one of the upper managers that if schools don't reopen and he's asked to come back in the office he's going to either come back along with the kids or not come back at all.
tsycho 6y ago
This is going to have a slow, but material impact on house prices in the Bay area over the next few years.
- wobbly99 6y ago
  Upward or downward?
  - three_seagrass 6y ago
    I would say downward because it's decreasing the demand to be close to these giant tech company campuses, but the bay area housing market has and always seems to defy typical economic patterns for housing. Throw in unemployment and upcoming inflation with the fed cash dump, and it's still very unpredictable.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      But at the same time people will want nicer homes as they're spending more time in them... I guess people living without gardens are pretty stressed right now.
      - three_seagrass 6y ago
        People are not buying nicer homes for a temporary shutdown. I have coworkers video conferencing from a desk in a closet and don't care.
        ghaff 6y ago
        The question though is about a "new normal" where people work from home a large chunk of the time--and, yes, if your apartment isn't just a place you sleep I think that affects the decision-making of a lot of people about where they live. I don't really see coworkers videoconferencing from closets but, then, most of us aren't in unusually high CoL areas.
        6y ago
dijit 6y ago
Ubisoft is going to start letting people return to the office starting from the 11th of May (this Monday). It will be in stages, where people who use specialised equipment (such as high end artistic systems such as well calibrated touch displays, or people who have sound design rooms) will return first, and they will be required to keep at least a seat of distance from their nearest neighbour. I believe we will rapidly return to the office assuming nothing bad occurs following the first wave. To say we as a company are not truly ready for remote work would be a major understatement, our entire security model depends on us being on premises, in fact, if it weren't for our recent migration to office365 (and AzureAD) it would not have been possible _at all_. File shares are inaccessible, along with HR resources, basically nothing except outlook is available externally. That said: this has been a fantastic experience for me, my backlog of tasks has become anemic, I attribute this to the fact that I have a home office with real visual and auditory privacy, we aggressively pursue even denser open office landscapes in our studios.[0] I wonder if it's the same in Google, though I somehow suspect not... I really hope there is some permanence to the remote working situation for us. Does anyone have a similar experience to me? [0]: Our office: https://youtu.be/Nse-7cJhxpQ?t=92 https://youtu.be/Nse-7cJhxpQ?t=92 (screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/km0UcVk.png https://i.imgur.com/km0UcVk.png)
- dmoy 6y ago
  There is a paper describing some of the remote work security stuff from Google (though obviously the paper goes into a lot of things other than that): https://research.google/pubs/pub45728/ https://research.google/pubs/pub45728/
  - dijit 6y ago
    Yeah I heard about concepts like BeyondCorp before, I think it's a really interesting methodology but it requires a certain consistency in application and a real forward thinking. You can't just put SMB shares on the internet, for instance. And most of our authentication mechanisms that currently exist are woefully insecure, but they're "bolstered" by being only accessible from certain VLANs in the network.
- Figs 6y ago
dariusj18 6y ago
I worry about offices that open but still allow people to work from home. I think there will be pressures for people to go into the office, creating density issues, or miss out on promotions, etc.
- Hamuko 6y ago
  Our offices have been "open" but absolutely no one is going there. I actually wonder when people will start going back because it doesn't really make much sense to go there if no one else is there.
  - dariusj18 6y ago
    The C level will instruct the managers to work in the office, then the brown nosers will follow, then everyone else will feel the need to ensure the brown nosers aren't given a leg up over them.
    - Hamuko 6y ago
      We've always been able to work remotely at our own discretion though.
    - trhway 6y ago
      >The C level will instruct the managers to work in the office, then the brown nosers will follow there is a risk that covid may turn that into a natural selection process ...
  - psalminen 6y ago
    I disagree. If my office was open I would love to go in only if no one else was there. The benefit I get from an office is having a place designated for work. No people = no distractions
    - Marsymars 6y ago
      Yeah, my office is in a commercial area next to my car dealership, Costco, grocery store, etc. so I go in once a week and get all my errands done at the same time - and the empty office is heavenly.
CPLX 6y ago
As someone who has been closely engaged in the tech world, but is outside of the culture of Silicon Valley, one cultural pattern I've noticed over and over again is the tendency for people in SV to state with utter confidence and conviction that we'll all be living our lives completely differently than we have been by this time next year, and it will be a permanent and culturally sweeping change. The fact that inevitably only about 10% of those transformations turn out to be sort of true, and happen 10x slower than predicted, never seems to break this cycle of breathless certainty. Maybe it's true, maybe this is really it, and the whole idea of closely clustered cities around shared commercial goals and people working closely together in the real world is finally ending. We shall see.
- xenihn 6y ago
  10% is still pretty good.
  - CPLX 6y ago
    Indeed, very impressive. And Silicon Valley is quite a powerhouse of wealth creation. But the point still stands.
- economicslol 6y ago
  Seen an anecdote saying we overestimate the impact of a technology over 5 years but underestimate it over 10 years. Seems relevant here
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    I'd say it's more akin to how fusion power is always 30 years away.
    - CPLX 6y ago
      And self driving cars, and augmented reality, and personal assistant robots, and so on and so forth.
- 6y ago
PHGamer 6y ago
still from working from home here. our office is open but my side boss said for the group to stay home. Im sure he will let us go in June but probably wont pressure people so WFH will probably be extended.
alpha_squared 6y ago
This doesn't seem terribly surprising. If there's no vaccine anticipated for 2020 and office layout was never designed with social distancing in mind, it seems like those who can work remote should. Personally, I know I rather work in person with my teammates, but I also wouldn't want to risk my health or theirs (or any of our loved ones') over it. This feels like the responsible thing, to just allow the remainder of the year to be remote/from home. I'm curious what this means long-term for other industries, though, and what a potential recovery looks like. From real estate to hospitality to services, I can't begin to comprehend the ripple effect that's currently taking shape.
claudeganon 6y ago
I wish more companies could be this rational. My partner’s team has been almost fully remote for two months, delivered all their work on time, but is expected to be back in the office June 1st because a higher-up wants an in-person meeting. There’s no other reason. It’s absurd.
avipars 6y ago
It would be interesting to see how productive Google's employees are remotely vs. in-office.
- formercoder 6y ago
  I would guess goog doesn’t suffer that much. They have beyondcorp, and all meetings often have folks video chatting in anyway. Granted even a small reduction for a giant workforce is a lot of $ in absolute sense.
- cameronbrown 6y ago
  There's an expectation that productivity will be lower while WFH and higher-ups have said that's okay and expected. That being said... the people around me at least seem to have adapted fully to the new working conditions despite the rough start. I suspect this trend is similar across the company (and other companies).
  - maccard 6y ago
    Honesy question. How many of those peoe have kids? On my team/in my interactions with my company, the people with kids seem to struggle however the people without kids are thriving.
    - banana_giraffe 6y ago
      Yes, people around me with young kids are struggling. Those with older kids are mostly able to have them self-entertain for long enough stretches that it works for them, though it seems to depend on the kids. I've also seen a couple of people without kids really struggling due to the lack of social interaction. For most this isn't an issue, or if it is, it's not a big deal, but for some, it's really hard to replace the in-office dynamic with video calls.
    - code_duck 6y ago
      I find this to be a revealing time for people with children - as in, it's made clear to them that their children are an incredibly annoying burden which they only survived previously due to the system of offloading them to professionals.
slowmovintarget 6y ago
I have some personal items I'd like to collect from the office. A board game or three, a bottle of ink, headphones... But beyond that, I'll likely work from home until there's a vaccine and I've been vaccinated. Time will tell though.
tssva 6y ago
My employer has told us that no one will return until the 2nd week of September. Starting then a few employees in certain roles will return to the office. Over the following months the number of employees returning will gradually be increased but even then it will only be for a couple of days a week with a set schedule so that social distancing is maintained.
mnm1 6y ago
What's going to change Jan. 1st? Nothing. I read this as the companies basically saying WFH in perpetuity till the corona virus ends. Or maybe that's just common sense I'm reading into a press release where I shouldn't be. The only question now becomes: if governors can shut down all businesses, why would they allow anyone who can WFH to go into the office and endanger others? At this point, we are definitely not ready to reopen safely, but a reopening will happen soon (next few months). Why risk more lives than necessary? I bet we will see this gamble though and thousands will die unnecessarily. Based on the plans Clearly, companies like Tesla show that you cannot leave this in corporate hands. How can governors be so shortsighted and callous with so many lives?
brendanmcd 6y ago
I wonder how 10-50 person startups companies will handle the move back to working in the office, and how much more bullish they'll be than Big Tech
- zaphod12 6y ago
  Work at a startup of about 70 - so just slightly larger than your ask. M n of 1 data is that we're out until Labor Day, for all of the same reasons as the big boys
thatsenough 6y ago
If my company announces WFH for the rest of the year, I'll be moving out of San Francisco in a heart beat. The office has been the only thing keeping me here for a long time now. I imagine SF natives might say, "Good riddance, don't let the door hit you on the way out," and I completely agree. I don't have issues with the city itself, but the value you get for your money here is completely abysmal if you're a renter or potential home buyer.
- mrep 6y ago
  Edit: reworded. Careful, some of my teammates and I are trying to do that and we have to get it cleared by management first as it changes what state taxes they will have to pay.
  - dboreham 6y ago
    Huh? People move states all the time. There are IRS rules about which state you should be deemed a resident, and you'll need to file state tax return in both states for the year in which you move. But there's no magic about needing a lease. I'm sure there are thousands of people living in their cars still paying taxes.
    - bdcravens 6y ago
      For the employer's taxes, are there incentives for hiring in-state? Or would it impact where they are considered to have a presence, for sales tax purposes?
      - ghaff 6y ago
        >considered to have a presence, for sales tax purposes Mostly irrelevant these days post-Wayfair. >For the employer's taxes, are there incentives for hiring in-state? I am not an accountant but there is some overhead with adding employees in different states and, especially, countries. And things like payments into unemployment pools may differ by state.
    - 6y ago
myroon5 6y ago
Amazon and Microsoft have announced similar plans through at least October already as well: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/local-business/many-businesses-may-follow-amazon-in-stretching-out-work-from-home-policies-crimping-downtown-recovery/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/local-business/many-bu... https://www.geekwire.com/2020/microsoft-updates-wfh-policy-allows-employees-work-remotely-october/ https://www.geekwire.com/2020/microsoft-updates-wfh-policy-a...
neonate 6y ago
https://archive.md/Gvsop https://archive.md/Gvsop
anotheryou 6y ago
I was asked to return to the office last week. Open office in Berlin :/. Everybody of the company will be back in 2-3 weeks.
higeorge13 6y ago
My company with 250 employees with offices in Europe and US announced last week that it aims to be 100% remote after this. Of course there will be a transition period, but i won't see myself in the office even after summer. To be honest, i have worked remote for at least one year in the past, and i can safely conclude it was way better and more productive than the last 2 months mainly because it was by choice, as well as it was part of an overall remote culture (e.g. meeting regularly in cafes, doing fun activities as a group). However, even after this perfect year i personally couldn't do it no more. People are probably making wrong assumptions of how nice the remote work might be due to the last 2 months because there was an overall excuse for their drop in productivity, or their lack of confidence (the world is collapsing how do you expect me to perform 100%?), and some extra time for family, netflix, spotify and social media due to the latter. IMO, in the wrong run the vast majority of people will definitely hate it and beg their companies to return to their offices. With all the above i am not underestimating the health concerns. Of course companies should take minimum risks while the threat is still ongoing. In the positive scenario where it is eliminated companies should rethink their full remote policies (if they apply such) which were imposed during this weird period.

154 points by ericzawo 6y ago

I've been WFH since March 3rd due to a persistent cough I had from a cold I had the previous week. I really need to replace my recliner as my workspace...

DabbyDabberson 6y ago
I've purchased a desk and workstation... But I'm still typically on the couch with my laptop. Its difficult.
- vorpalhex 6y ago
  If you can setup a dedicated work area, even if it's temporary, do it and restrict work to that space. That means you only use that space for work, and don't use the rest of your home. Your sofa is for relaxing, don't let work ruin a perfectly good sofa. CCP Grey [^1] has an excellent video on this. [^1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snAhsXyO3Ck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snAhsXyO3Ck (Video warning)
  - Operyl 6y ago
    I literally cannot stress how important this is. It's all fun and games until you're working from your bed, and then find that you can not stop thinking in bed and then never fall asleep. ~ Signed, someone working from home full time for the past 6 years.

ghaff 6y ago

The headline overstates the body of the article a bit although it's not really inaccurate. It is an interesting question to ask, come fall or winter, whether--if plenty at some companies can work from home and life/productivity goes on for much of a year--what does office life look like going forward? Most companies will still have offices but I wonder if things shift to more of a hoteling type system with conference rooms and other collaboration spaces with people coming in a couple days per week or so.

xwdv 6y ago
As WFH becomes the norm, office life will become shittier over time. Less budgeting will go into fancy offices, they will become more spartan unassuming buildings. People who have to go to offices to work will be seen as second class citizens too poor or too unequipped to do any work from home. They will be seen as slow, old school workers who become more of a liability for workplace harassment policies or accidents. If you have an excellent home with a great internet connection then why go to a dirty, nasty, public office where you sit in an uncomfortable chair using cheap equipment and even risk being groped in a hallway or break room? Not to mention the risk of being killed along your commute twice a day. All while the remote workers sit gently in their favorite spot by the warm glow of a sunlit window, quietly getting tasks done as they listen to soft music coming from their home speakers. When the workday ends the office worker has to make a mad rush and brave traffic to get home. The remote worker can end the day whenever the time is right, with all the ceremony of an index finger bringing their laptop lid down to a close; what’s for dinner honey? Very few people will choose to go to an office, working from home is a status symbol and a sign of being a well educated knowledge worker. This is even the case now during the pandemic where plenty of people boast they would be fine staying home all year while the poor and destitute are begging to go back to an office or worksite because it’s the only way they can put food on the table. Their value is mostly in their physical bodies, not their pure knowledge. And if you can’t work from home, you’ll choose to work from some communal workspace or cafe of your choosing before ever choosing to make a dreaded commute to an office.
- GhettoMaestro 6y ago
  Yeah this is a fantasy for introverts and hermits. This will not happen. The world is run by Chads, who are by nature extroverted.
- ghaff 6y ago
  You're overstating it. I gave up a dedicated space in my local office before all this. But I'd be happy to go in a day or two a week if there were good reasons to do so. But most of my team is very distributed and (during normal times) most of us travel a lot so there aren't going to be a lot of serendipitous encounters. What is probably true is that those who thrive with office socializing and activities will find the norm at companies where coming into an office becomes more about having scheduled team meetings and collaborative work on specific days less pleasant than in the past.

twblalock 6y ago

Some of this is due to local coronavirus lockdowns and the uncertainty around when they will be lifted, but there is also uncertainty about when schools and day cares will open again. Providing child care will keep a lot of people at home even if they aren't required to be. On top of that, a lot of people won't want to go back to the office, not because they enjoy working from home, but because they will still be afraid of getting the virus. Being at the office probably won't feel normal anyway due to continued social distancing and the use of masks. Combine that with concerns that the virus may surge again in the Fall, maybe necessitating another lockdown, and you have a recipe for working at home much longer than what might be legally required.

drspacemonkey 6y ago
>On top of that, a lot of people won't want to go back to the office, not because they enjoy working from home, but because they will still be afraid of getting the virus. Being at the office probably won't feel normal anyway due to continued social distancing and the use of masks That's where I'm at. My workplace put out a survey to see how people felt about going back to the office next month, and I don't think anyone was willing to risk it. We'd be wearing masks, taking public transit to/from the office, and sanitizing our hands every 15 minutes. Having spoken to some management people, this survey is mostly being done just to confirm that we should discuss getting rid of the office entirely. Which would be a huge cost saving for us.
- meesles 6y ago
  Same discussion happening at my company. Makes me wonder if office real estate is going to crash and burn...
  - cheez 6y ago
    yes it is
znpy 6y ago
One of my colleagues told one of the upper managers that if schools don't reopen and he's asked to come back in the office he's going to either come back along with the kids or not come back at all.

tsycho 6y ago

This is going to have a slow, but material impact on house prices in the Bay area over the next few years.

wobbly99 6y ago
Upward or downward?
- three_seagrass 6y ago
  I would say downward because it's decreasing the demand to be close to these giant tech company campuses, but the bay area housing market has and always seems to defy typical economic patterns for housing. Throw in unemployment and upcoming inflation with the fed cash dump, and it's still very unpredictable.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    But at the same time people will want nicer homes as they're spending more time in them... I guess people living without gardens are pretty stressed right now.
    - three_seagrass 6y ago
      People are not buying nicer homes for a temporary shutdown. I have coworkers video conferencing from a desk in a closet and don't care.
      - ghaff 6y ago
        The question though is about a "new normal" where people work from home a large chunk of the time--and, yes, if your apartment isn't just a place you sleep I think that affects the decision-making of a lot of people about where they live. I don't really see coworkers videoconferencing from closets but, then, most of us aren't in unusually high CoL areas.
      - 6y ago

dijit 6y ago

Ubisoft is going to start letting people return to the office starting from the 11th of May (this Monday). It will be in stages, where people who use specialised equipment (such as high end artistic systems such as well calibrated touch displays, or people who have sound design rooms) will return first, and they will be required to keep at least a seat of distance from their nearest neighbour. I believe we will rapidly return to the office assuming nothing bad occurs following the first wave. To say we as a company are not truly ready for remote work would be a major understatement, our entire security model depends on us being on premises, in fact, if it weren't for our recent migration to office365 (and AzureAD) it would not have been possible _at all_. File shares are inaccessible, along with HR resources, basically nothing except outlook is available externally. That said: this has been a fantastic experience for me, my backlog of tasks has become anemic, I attribute this to the fact that I have a home office with real visual and auditory privacy, we aggressively pursue even denser open office landscapes in our studios.[0] I wonder if it's the same in Google, though I somehow suspect not... I really hope there is some permanence to the remote working situation for us. Does anyone have a similar experience to me? [0]: Our office: https://youtu.be/Nse-7cJhxpQ?t=92 https://youtu.be/Nse-7cJhxpQ?t=92 (screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/km0UcVk.png https://i.imgur.com/km0UcVk.png)

dmoy 6y ago
There is a paper describing some of the remote work security stuff from Google (though obviously the paper goes into a lot of things other than that): https://research.google/pubs/pub45728/ https://research.google/pubs/pub45728/
- dijit 6y ago
  Yeah I heard about concepts like BeyondCorp before, I think it's a really interesting methodology but it requires a certain consistency in application and a real forward thinking. You can't just put SMB shares on the internet, for instance. And most of our authentication mechanisms that currently exist are woefully insecure, but they're "bolstered" by being only accessible from certain VLANs in the network.
Figs 6y ago

dariusj18 6y ago

I worry about offices that open but still allow people to work from home. I think there will be pressures for people to go into the office, creating density issues, or miss out on promotions, etc.

Hamuko 6y ago
Our offices have been "open" but absolutely no one is going there. I actually wonder when people will start going back because it doesn't really make much sense to go there if no one else is there.
- dariusj18 6y ago
  The C level will instruct the managers to work in the office, then the brown nosers will follow, then everyone else will feel the need to ensure the brown nosers aren't given a leg up over them.
  - Hamuko 6y ago
    We've always been able to work remotely at our own discretion though.
  - trhway 6y ago
    >The C level will instruct the managers to work in the office, then the brown nosers will follow there is a risk that covid may turn that into a natural selection process ...
- psalminen 6y ago
  I disagree. If my office was open I would love to go in only if no one else was there. The benefit I get from an office is having a place designated for work. No people = no distractions
  - Marsymars 6y ago
    Yeah, my office is in a commercial area next to my car dealership, Costco, grocery store, etc. so I go in once a week and get all my errands done at the same time - and the empty office is heavenly.

CPLX 6y ago

As someone who has been closely engaged in the tech world, but is outside of the culture of Silicon Valley, one cultural pattern I've noticed over and over again is the tendency for people in SV to state with utter confidence and conviction that we'll all be living our lives completely differently than we have been by this time next year, and it will be a permanent and culturally sweeping change. The fact that inevitably only about 10% of those transformations turn out to be sort of true, and happen 10x slower than predicted, never seems to break this cycle of breathless certainty. Maybe it's true, maybe this is really it, and the whole idea of closely clustered cities around shared commercial goals and people working closely together in the real world is finally ending. We shall see.

xenihn 6y ago
10% is still pretty good.
- CPLX 6y ago
  Indeed, very impressive. And Silicon Valley is quite a powerhouse of wealth creation. But the point still stands.
economicslol 6y ago
Seen an anecdote saying we overestimate the impact of a technology over 5 years but underestimate it over 10 years. Seems relevant here
- pmiller2 6y ago
  I'd say it's more akin to how fusion power is always 30 years away.
  - CPLX 6y ago
    And self driving cars, and augmented reality, and personal assistant robots, and so on and so forth.
6y ago

PHGamer 6y ago

still from working from home here. our office is open but my side boss said for the group to stay home. Im sure he will let us go in June but probably wont pressure people so WFH will probably be extended.

alpha_squared 6y ago

This doesn't seem terribly surprising. If there's no vaccine anticipated for 2020 and office layout was never designed with social distancing in mind, it seems like those who can work remote should. Personally, I know I rather work in person with my teammates, but I also wouldn't want to risk my health or theirs (or any of our loved ones') over it. This feels like the responsible thing, to just allow the remainder of the year to be remote/from home. I'm curious what this means long-term for other industries, though, and what a potential recovery looks like. From real estate to hospitality to services, I can't begin to comprehend the ripple effect that's currently taking shape.

claudeganon 6y ago

I wish more companies could be this rational. My partner’s team has been almost fully remote for two months, delivered all their work on time, but is expected to be back in the office June 1st because a higher-up wants an in-person meeting. There’s no other reason. It’s absurd.

avipars 6y ago

It would be interesting to see how productive Google's employees are remotely vs. in-office.

formercoder 6y ago
I would guess goog doesn’t suffer that much. They have beyondcorp, and all meetings often have folks video chatting in anyway. Granted even a small reduction for a giant workforce is a lot of $ in absolute sense.
cameronbrown 6y ago
There's an expectation that productivity will be lower while WFH and higher-ups have said that's okay and expected. That being said... the people around me at least seem to have adapted fully to the new working conditions despite the rough start. I suspect this trend is similar across the company (and other companies).
- maccard 6y ago
  Honesy question. How many of those peoe have kids? On my team/in my interactions with my company, the people with kids seem to struggle however the people without kids are thriving.
  - banana_giraffe 6y ago
    Yes, people around me with young kids are struggling. Those with older kids are mostly able to have them self-entertain for long enough stretches that it works for them, though it seems to depend on the kids. I've also seen a couple of people without kids really struggling due to the lack of social interaction. For most this isn't an issue, or if it is, it's not a big deal, but for some, it's really hard to replace the in-office dynamic with video calls.
  - code_duck 6y ago
    I find this to be a revealing time for people with children - as in, it's made clear to them that their children are an incredibly annoying burden which they only survived previously due to the system of offloading them to professionals.

slowmovintarget 6y ago

I have some personal items I'd like to collect from the office. A board game or three, a bottle of ink, headphones... But beyond that, I'll likely work from home until there's a vaccine and I've been vaccinated. Time will tell though.

tssva 6y ago

My employer has told us that no one will return until the 2nd week of September. Starting then a few employees in certain roles will return to the office. Over the following months the number of employees returning will gradually be increased but even then it will only be for a couple of days a week with a set schedule so that social distancing is maintained.

mnm1 6y ago

What's going to change Jan. 1st? Nothing. I read this as the companies basically saying WFH in perpetuity till the corona virus ends. Or maybe that's just common sense I'm reading into a press release where I shouldn't be. The only question now becomes: if governors can shut down all businesses, why would they allow anyone who can WFH to go into the office and endanger others? At this point, we are definitely not ready to reopen safely, but a reopening will happen soon (next few months). Why risk more lives than necessary? I bet we will see this gamble though and thousands will die unnecessarily. Based on the plans Clearly, companies like Tesla show that you cannot leave this in corporate hands. How can governors be so shortsighted and callous with so many lives?

brendanmcd 6y ago

I wonder how 10-50 person startups companies will handle the move back to working in the office, and how much more bullish they'll be than Big Tech

zaphod12 6y ago
Work at a startup of about 70 - so just slightly larger than your ask. M n of 1 data is that we're out until Labor Day, for all of the same reasons as the big boys

thatsenough 6y ago

If my company announces WFH for the rest of the year, I'll be moving out of San Francisco in a heart beat. The office has been the only thing keeping me here for a long time now. I imagine SF natives might say, "Good riddance, don't let the door hit you on the way out," and I completely agree. I don't have issues with the city itself, but the value you get for your money here is completely abysmal if you're a renter or potential home buyer.

mrep 6y ago
Edit: reworded. Careful, some of my teammates and I are trying to do that and we have to get it cleared by management first as it changes what state taxes they will have to pay.
- dboreham 6y ago
  Huh? People move states all the time. There are IRS rules about which state you should be deemed a resident, and you'll need to file state tax return in both states for the year in which you move. But there's no magic about needing a lease. I'm sure there are thousands of people living in their cars still paying taxes.
  - bdcravens 6y ago
    For the employer's taxes, are there incentives for hiring in-state? Or would it impact where they are considered to have a presence, for sales tax purposes?
    - ghaff 6y ago
      >considered to have a presence, for sales tax purposes Mostly irrelevant these days post-Wayfair. >For the employer's taxes, are there incentives for hiring in-state? I am not an accountant but there is some overhead with adding employees in different states and, especially, countries. And things like payments into unemployment pools may differ by state.
  - 6y ago

myroon5 6y ago

Amazon and Microsoft have announced similar plans through at least October already as well: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/local-business/many-businesses-may-follow-amazon-in-stretching-out-work-from-home-policies-crimping-downtown-recovery/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/local-business/many-bu... https://www.geekwire.com/2020/microsoft-updates-wfh-policy-allows-employees-work-remotely-october/ https://www.geekwire.com/2020/microsoft-updates-wfh-policy-a...

neonate 6y ago

https://archive.md/Gvsop https://archive.md/Gvsop

anotheryou 6y ago

I was asked to return to the office last week. Open office in Berlin :/. Everybody of the company will be back in 2-3 weeks.

higeorge13 6y ago

My company with 250 employees with offices in Europe and US announced last week that it aims to be 100% remote after this. Of course there will be a transition period, but i won't see myself in the office even after summer. To be honest, i have worked remote for at least one year in the past, and i can safely conclude it was way better and more productive than the last 2 months mainly because it was by choice, as well as it was part of an overall remote culture (e.g. meeting regularly in cafes, doing fun activities as a group). However, even after this perfect year i personally couldn't do it no more. People are probably making wrong assumptions of how nice the remote work might be due to the last 2 months because there was an overall excuse for their drop in productivity, or their lack of confidence (the world is collapsing how do you expect me to perform 100%?), and some extra time for family, netflix, spotify and social media due to the latter. IMO, in the wrong run the vast majority of people will definitely hate it and beg their companies to return to their offices. With all the above i am not underestimating the health concerns. Of course companies should take minimum risks while the threat is still ongoing. In the positive scenario where it is eliminated companies should rethink their full remote policies (if they apply such) which were imposed during this weird period.