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Google's Sundar Pichai says future of office is employee 'on-sites'
- _ah 6y agohttps://archive.is/ckHvh https://archive.is/ckHvh
- ashtonkem 6y agoIsn’t Pinchai the same executive that’s overlooked Google’s “We’ll throw everything at the wall and then immediately cancel it” period? If so, I’m not exactly enamored with his leadership as is, I don’t know why I should care about his take on remote vs. colocation.
- pb7 6y agoDo you work at Google? If not, I’m not sure why you would care one way or another. This doesn’t affect you.
- Hamuko 6y ago>If not, I’m not sure why you would care one way or another. This doesn’t affect you. Say that to all teams that have been reorganised around two pizzas.
- knorker 6y agoYou mean Amazon? What do you mean?
- pseudalopex 6y agoOther companies imitate Amazon and Google.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ashtonkem 6y agoWhen Google does things, huge swaths of the tech community reorganize our companies to match what Google does because Google does it, even if it turns out to be objectively stupid or only relevant at Google’s scale. I remember when damn near every company had a brain teaser part of their interview loop, because that’s what Google did. It turns out that that was a terrible way to interview engineers, but Google’s clout accidentally made a trend. On paper, Google announcing this means that only Google engineers will be affected. But Google also trend sets, so if Google starts cancelling WFH for spurious reasons, such as the personal idiosyncrasies of their executives, then a lot of people who don’t work at Google suddenly got their WFH opportunities put at risk for no good reason.
- acdha 6y agoGoogle definitely did this - somewhat famously with that billboard campaign which made the national news - but that trend started much earlier at Microsoft (Bill Gates apparently loves puzzles).
- ashtonkem 6y agoTotally fair. It’s not just Google that other companies cargo cult based on. Google is just currently on top, like how Microsoft once was during the Gates era.
- summerlight 6y agoPichai became the CEO 5 years ago and many of the deprecated product launches predate this CEO appointment. You can legitimately blame him for product cancellation but I don't think it makes sense to blame him for "throwing everything at the wall".
- hprotagonist 6y agothink of the cost savings on massages and yoga classes and espresso machines!
- toomuchtodo 6y agoI chuckled, but more importantly, think of the comp savings when you hire from outside the Bay Area (if Google can get a decent remote hiring process in place, much smaller companies have but TBD if Google has the fortitude to). Lots of folks who otherwise couldn’t work for Google now can, and will get paid more than their market probably allowed for previously.
- dehrmann 6y ago> think of the comp savings when you hire from outside the Bay Area Just considering the US, I wonder how many engineers are talented enough to work for Google, are interested in working for Google, and aren't already there, even in a satellite office? I'm sure there are some, but between a variety of office locations and good pay, I'm not convinced there's a large untapped pool of rural tech talent.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoYou might be right, but now that Google is more accepting of the concept the cost is very low (at their scale) for them to make the attempt.
- xboxnolifes 6y agoI'm sure there's plenty, even only considering how many new graduates they hire every year and then relocate.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- scarface74 6y agoAm I incorrect in assuming that you don’t have to be “talented” to be hired at Google just masochistic enough to “grind leetCode”?
- yalogin 6y agoWe will have this back and forth pull over working from home and on premises. However the needle has irrevocably moved on the scale towards working from home and that is not changing. What I mean by that is its universally acknowledged that WFH is not an automatic "slacking off" and "not productive" and its on par with working in the office. So yes there are other reasons execs will say makes on site is better but productivity is definitely not one of the reasons any more.
- Consultant32452 6y agoI've only seen execs continue to trot out the productivity line. What other reasons are you seeing?
- SteveNuts 6y ago"synergy" and other buzzwords is what I hear against permanent WFH.
- TigeriusKirk 6y agoExecs are going to push for in-office because in-office prioritizes the very interpersonal skills that made them execs in the first place. They won't put it quite that bluntly, but it'll be the underlying reasoning.
- dougmwne 6y agoExactly. And furthermore, execs got to where they are because they enjoy having power and control over others. It's easy for the introverts to forget that power feels absolutely amazing. Managing invisible agents filing Jira tickets will never be as satisfying as commanding a large open office of people you can watch grind away. Power and status is an enormous motivator and I have recognized it in nearly every single person in a position of power I have ever met or worked with. Some hide it, others flaunt it. Offices are going nowhere.
- gravypod 6y agoI think what people with enough instrumentation and metrics collection, like google, are going to find are there are teams that are 10x to 100x more productive during the pandemic and other teams that are 1/10th to 1/100th as productive during the pandemic. There's no one size fits all but for teams or people who perform WAY better in WFH having it as an option that isn't looked down upon is very comforting. I may be able to move far away from the city at some point in my career. I am extremely eager to do so and I don't think I am alone. For what I pay for rent I could be buying a large house in other parts of the US or central America
- seibelj 6y agoI was a believer in office work being superior to working from home. Then with covid I had to work from home. I hated it for the first 2 months. Then perhaps I became institutionalized because now I prefer it. Without a commute I have more time for sleep and child care related things. Plus I am more focused. If the office ever reopens then I will probably only go in one or two days a week, and all of my employees can choose their own schedules also. We will just mandate coming in for certain meetings.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- podgib 6y agoI'm the opposite. I used to think working from home would be great, and that the office was fairly irrelevant given all my work was on a computer anyway. Six months in, the main thing that this experience has taught me is that I never want to work a remote job. It's miserable.
- arkitaip 6y agoWhat made it miserable, if you don't mind me asking?
- username90 6y agoWorking at an office is free social interactions. If you live alone and can't muster the energy to organize meeting people at least you still get to meet your colleagues every day. If instead you work from home it is pretty easy to get into a downward spiral where you don't socialize, get even more miserable making it even harder to socialize until you get depressed.
- slx26 6y agoWhich should also put us on alert that we might be doing social spaces wrong.
- cmsonger 6y agoIt's worth noting the swift evolution of tooling in support of this under the current pressures.
- ithkuil 6y agoAfaik amazon "evolved" their chat system by switching the whole company to slack
- xoxoy 6y agointerestingly enough the WeWork model might get more popular post-covid - either for individuals to have some office outside the home or for companies to rent out of as satellites for remote workers
- paganel 6y agoCoffee shops, too. I have a friend who owns a coffee shop (I live in Europe) and I was afraid that he’d have to close it down for good. He’s been allowed to open again since 3-4 weeks, and even though the first couple of weeks after re-opening things were slow lately I’ve seen more and more people going there during the day in order to work. Things are not yet at the pre-pandemic level, but we’re slowly getting there.
- slickrick216 6y agoTake it from someone working in a remote office. This only works so long as everyone is remote. Once the majority of folks are back in an office suddenly those not there are seen as “other” and not part of the core team.
- devilduck 6y agoIt's a good thing this will not be as normal as it used to be. The rest of us who think it's poor quality operation will get to be more picky with who we choose to work for.
- manojlds 6y agoThis is exactly what I have been thinking. The hybrid models don't feel like they will work very well. (with existing level of training and adhoc adoptions) Also things like you have a meeting and someone is late - when everyone is remote, it is very easy to expect and accommodate it. But when most or many are in office and in a room and one person that is remote is late - probably won't be as well received.
- detaro 6y agoGeneral rule: if you have remote participants, everyone participates in the meeting remote unless there is a good reason otherwise.
- throwawaysea 6y agoYep we have done this even before lockdowns. If even just one person is remote, we ask everyone to call in rather than going to a meeting room, to force the meeting to be run in an accommodative manner. You need these practices if you collaborate with teams in different offices anyways.
- jovdg 6y agoSounds like a terrible thing.
- devilduck 6y agoThis is not the future at all, it's the past.
- siliconc0w 6y agoI would be more productive in an actual office - a private quiet space where I can focus but unfortunately that isn't what I have either at home or 'on site'.
- carlio 6y agoI think this is forgotten a little by the advocates of WFH vs in-office. I live alone in an apartment with 2 bedrooms, of which one I converted into an office space. It's easy for me to "commute" and have a separate area for work and switch off when I go into the lounge. It's not so easy for people who are in shared accommodation or in studio flats and so on, or young families in small apartments. Similarly, lots of people move to work and don't have a social circle yet, so their job is their social circle at the beginning. Of course, you don't necessarily need to move for that job any more, but at the same time if you have, then you lose your only social contact if you have by working from home. It's not as simple as people make out, there are benefits and disadvantages to everyone. I'm a big fan but I can only talk from my position which is quite fortunate in terms of circumstances.
- johnghanks 6y agoThis is why it shouldn't be required either way. People who want to work from home should be able to work from home. People who would prefer to come into the office should be able to do so. It disappoints me to read comments here about people proclaiming absolutes in either direction. To be clear - I'm an advocate for full-WFH: I am fortunate enough to have a space for working and a space for other. ... but I recognize that some people have different situations at home.
- carlio 6y agoThe downside of the mixed approach is, as an earlier commenter said, that you can end up with an "us vs them" mentality, where the people who see each other every day and get to have small-talk and get to know each other grow closer and then the people who work from home are somewhat on the periphery. I've seen this before, I've been working remotely for a lot of the last 7 years and there's a distinct difference in social dynamics. Even if the people in the office need to use Slack or whatever for communicating, they have their in jokes that they sprinkle in and you can feel a bit alienated or ostracised if you're in a minority of work-from-home employees. Equally, if some people are not able to work from home, that can build resentment or envy. So the company culture can be affected by different amounts of in-office vs home-office, every company will have their own sweet spot, but I agree with you, there is no simple one size fits all solution.
- libertine 6y agoAlways take these opinions with a grain of salt. Remember Google was the promoter of the open-space office configuration, and that trend ended up being a terrible mistake for a lot of companies that followed just because it was the latest fashion in office design. I had bad experience with it, in the context of a Media Agency, to the point where I found that more than 10 people in an open space starts to become too much. 15 to 20 you need to have headphones cranked up in order to be able to do any work. So bare in mind that just because it's Google doesn't mean they should be the trend setter. Google does what Google thinks will work for them.
- emteycz 6y agoInterestingly, most mainstream media had open offices way before it was cool.
- nuclearnice1 6y agoI think media and finance had it very early. Here is a story with picture of old newsrooms. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-newsroom-rush-of-old-234187/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-newsroom-rush-of-... What strikes me is the high level of communication and coordination across individualS required to do that work. This seems to be the quality that newsrooms and trading floors are optimized for.
- vmception 6y agoNow get rid of OKRs at small companies that involves anyone else besides managers.
- qppo 6y agoThe places I've worked with open offices did it because it was cheap, not because it was cool.
- dekhn 6y agothat's the same reason google did it. not because it dramatically improves collaboration.
- fizixer 6y agoMisleading title. It gives the impression that Google tried WFH, found it to be inadequate, and took a U-turn, saying 'on-site work' is the future (as well as the past, and WFH was a failed experiment). But in the body of the article, the CEO is advocating a hybrid model, with increased flexibility for WFH, so much so that working from office are being declared special days (meetings), labelled 'on-site days' ('on-site meetings').
- heavyset_go 6y agoI will never go back to commuting, and find very little need for on-site meetings or interviews.
- kache_ 6y agoI've been working at a company that was remote for 7 years. We are DEALING with remote work. We're making it work, over many years of experimentation. It only works because everyone is remote. And the only reason they hire remote is because new startups cannot compete with FANG for talent in hubs. Remote work is a compromise, not an advantage.
- johnghanks 6y ago> Remote work is a compromise, not an advantage. for you, maybe.
- Oricle 6y agoJewgle
- throwawaysea 6y agoI’m disappointed in Sundar’s tone deaf vision for the future of work. A hybrid model requires employees to be on site some of the time, and forces them to live nearby. It will also make people feel like they HAVE to come in to the office so they aren’t othered. This also sacrifices some of the major benefits for employees like the freedom to live wherever we want, suiting our financial needs, familial needs, political/cultural needs, etc. We need to avoid having gigantic concentrations of our society in a few locations, and COVID lockdowns have proven we can make it work in knowledge industries.
- kostarelo 6y agoIt seems like you are comparing his vision with your own ultimate preference.
- danans 6y ago> This also sacrifices some of the major benefits for employees like the freedom to live wherever we want, suiting our financial needs, familial needs, political/cultural needs, etc. We need to avoid having gigantic concentrations of our society in a few locations, The freedom to live wherever you want is great, but it is not without costs. Major cities aren't going away. They are the creative hubs of society. Most group human endeavors are the product of cities. To be part of that creative community, you have to be near a city. However, we could afford to have some diversification in tech industry beyond the big hubs, but in Google's case they've already done this (i.e. Boulder, Ann Arbor). Bear in mind that there will be resistance in those places, also, for very rational reasons (i.e. escalating housing costs). There is undoubtedly a societal reorganization underway, but it is highly unlikely to satisfy either the purely remote or purely in-office preferences.
- ghaff 6y agoDepending upon what getting together sometimes looks like, it can still give a lot of flexibility. If it's come in 2 days per week, you probably still need to live a 2-3 hour drive away. (Not that some consultants etc. don't sly to a work location every week.) But if it's the odd off-site/2 day team meeting, people can live pretty much anywhere--at least domestically in the US.
- madamelic 6y agoI am still surprised by how many early startups have offices. After seeing it burn two different startups I was at, I am baffled why they burn money to have offices in a big city when money is tight (or they should be acting like it, rather than assuming they will always get another round at favorable terms) When you are stable and profitable, having an office isn't that big of a deal. When you are burning money and looking down a cliff, maybe a $25k+ / mo expense is better spent hiring someone. Plus you can ethically pay people under market and both sides are happy (employee cuts their expenses by 50%+, you cut your payroll by 25%). Your employees will be happier, you get to pay them less, no need to buy desks, you can scale your business infinitely and you get rid of likely your biggest expense. Startups could even spend a tiny fraction on improving their employee's offices. $1k yearly home office stipend would be huge for an employee, but a drop in the bucket compared to $1k / employee / month office expense. VC funding causes people to make dumb decisions.
- bengale 6y agoThe inverse of an off-site presumably. Where people would go away from the office for a meeting.
- poisonborz 6y agoDon't know about other places, but in Europe office space in central metropolitan area is as low as 1-2 employee's monthly wage. For 10+ people, the community benefits are clearly there. The bigger question is, can the company quickly scale with finding on-site people around the area quickly enough?
- carterklein13 6y agoDepends on the location. In NYC, at least, that's definitely not the case (and it's a big reason why Manhattan is quickly turning into block after block of Starbucks followed by Chase Bank followed by Chipotle).
- marcinzm 6y agoRemote makes communication harder and startups generally lack good process. Bad communication + bad process = a disaster. Startups can't have good process because they don't know what they're doing yet so process would be a slow down. Startups can also be very stressful and without the human empathy component (that is hard to gain remotely) small arguments can explode into epics nuclear explosions. Startups are about balancing a bunch of things rather than having some type of optimal stable configuration. Working in an office let's you balance a bunch of other things more easily.
- biztos 6y ago> Pichai said that Google is "reconfiguring" its office spaces to accommodate what he called "on-sites" — presumably, days where employees, who mostly work from home, gather in the office. I love it when the corporate speak isn't even intelligible to the business press.
- gipp 6y agoI mean I agree with your statement in a vacuum but the line you quoted seems pretty straightforward to me.
- biztos 6y agoBusiness Insider was guessing at the meaning of Pichai's quote. Sorry if that was unclear. [Edit: clarity.]
- BossingAround 6y agoIs "on-sites" days where people work on site? Is it people who work on site? Is it something completely different that Google is creating? The sentence is guessing it's the first, admitting it could be anything else.
- shajznnckfke 6y agoThe sentence does appear to illustrate that neither the writer nor anyone who edited the story is close enough to the industry to understand some common terminology. It lowers my confidence in the publication’s analysis on related subjects.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- DebtDeflation 6y agoNot sure if the article title changed since it was posted, but the HN title is not at all reflective of the content and the actual title on BI now is: "Google's CEO says the future of work involves a 'hybrid model' and that the company is already reconfiguring its offices for employee 'on-sites'". From the article: "Pichai said that Google is "reconfiguring" its office spaces to accommodate what he called "on-sites" — presumably, days where employees, who mostly work from home, gather in the office." If anything he's saying that work from home is going to become semi-permanent, it's just that there will be times when people will need to come in and work together in an office and they're making plans to support that. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
- dang 6y agoThe HN title is the article's HTML doc title, which is a legitimate variant to use here.
- H_Pylori 6y agoAs I see it there are a lot of advantages and few disadvantages in WFH. Advantages: - No need for commuting. This is maybe the lowest hanging fruit if you want to reduce CO2 emissions and pollution in general. - Geographical independence. A company is not limited from the pool of candidates willing to move physically close to its premises, and workers have more companies to choose from. - Potential for higher productivity, since a worker can choose how and when to work. - Lower cost for companies (fewer physical offices). - More meaningful family life for workers. - Less potential for office politics (I hope). - More opportunities for disabled workers. Disadvantages: - In mixed teams, those who work remotely may be considered 2nd class citizens. - Some people may miss the kind of socializing they do at work. - Potential for lower productivity, not all homes are suitable environments for work, and also more potential for slacking off (but I doubt it, slackers are going to be slackers no matter where they are). - If you are a pointy haired manager, you might find yourself out of a job. As I see it the advantages greatly outweigh the disadvantages. I know WFH can't work for everyone, but I see that most objections come from people who feel threatened by this model (i.e. managers, often pointy haired). Also some of the disadvantages may be remedied with simple solutions (for example, make your teams entirely office based, or entirely remote, since mixed teams don't work too well).
- user_501238901 6y agoWonder why California doesn't have any outdoor offices. Respitory viruses are pretty much limited to spreading indoors. I also assume having a nice green outdoors view would be much less stressing to the workers when compared with a traditional office environment. It's really easy to set up and disband. Just run power and internet cables, set up some desks and off you go. No need for expensive construction.
- babesh 6y agoOutdoor spaces are generally not good for tech work. You can’t see your screen because of glare, run out of power because there isn’t an outlet to power your laptop, am uncomfortable because of the seating position, have a gust of wind blow away your notes, don’t have enough screen real estate, can be too hot or too cold, etc... Interestingly, of campuses I have been to, the Stanford campus seems to have been the best designed for this. Plenty of verandas and balconies protected from light and wind, outlets everywhere, good WiFi. The original campus buildings were designed to protect people from the sun. Glad they carried it over to the new buildings. Facebook with their courtyard is also good.
- ghaff 6y agoYeah, I have a nice deck and even extended WiFi so I could work out there. But, in practice, glare/temperature/etc. means I don't really like working there. Even if I'm fine working on a laptop on my lap (which I often am), I have a sunny room that's just generally more comfortable. Maybe if I had an outdoor location that was better screened and shaded.
- scsilver 6y agoI honestly think modern coffee shops are the pinnacle of working environments.
- andrewfong 6y agoOne of the advertised upsides of remote work is reduced carbon emissions but I wonder how that works out when you have required on sites as well. Back of the envelope math suggests if you have remote works flying in from, say, NYC to SFO, it's not clear whether there's a net carbon footprint reduction.
- christiansakai 6y agoI think WFH can be better for the economy and quality of life due to more people spread to cheaper suburbs thus revitalizing suburb economy. It also will contribute more to the diversity of people, racially, socio economically and poltiically in the suburbs.
- Finnucane 6y agoIn the short term at least, the suburbs are not able to absorb a big surge. Some places are seeing two or three times normal demand. There’s no way they can adapt fast enough and prices in those places are rising.
- jdavis703 6y agoHow are the suburbs going to boom when many suburban folks want to keep mandatory single family zoning and do away with inclusionary regulations like Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing? If they can’t build up to support more the economy will stagnate, diversity will remain the same, and the burbs will continue to be an area of swing voters.
- deepakhj 6y agoWhat about climate change?
- Obsnold 6y agoI think a hybrid model would be my ideal setup. Something like flextime core hours but extended to days of the week.
- pts_ 6y agoReading and writing ideas is community too.
- poulsbohemian 6y agoBottom line: People are professionals and most can figure out what they need to do their best work. For some it's in an office, for others it's somewhere else. It may even be different places depending on the project and where they are in life. Yes, I know companies and teams need a certain degree of consistency, but if they would stop being paternalistic to their employees and trust them to figure it out it would make such a difference. Work wherever you can do your best work and if an employer won't support you in that, find a new employer.
- rainyMammoth 6y agoThe thing that nobody realizes is that we are now subsidizing an office at home and those companies are still expecting us onsite once or twice a week so that we cannot move to a low rent area. In the meantime, those same companies are going to downsize their offices since not everyone is going to show up the same "days" at the office. I want to move to a model where everyone is expected at the office maybe a week (or a couple days of a week) every two months. That would allow workers to really live wherever they want. It also allows to live close to the office for those that don't want to travel a week every couple of months.
- hyder_m29 6y agoThat introduces a host of new problems. Workers will likely have to leave their families behind for a week every 2 months. And where will they stay during office-week?
- gundmc 6y ago> Workers will likely have to leave their families behind for a week every 2 months. Yes, or they could continue to live locally. It's about more flexibility for what is the right choice for each family. I don't see this as a problem. > And where will they stay during office-week? Hotel, AirBnb, corporate short-term housing? People travel for work all the time and it's not an issue. If hotel capacity becomes insufficient other solutions will pop up - like furnished apartment rentals. I don't see this as a large issue either.
- ACow_Adonis 6y agoWell, with all due respect, that doesn't result in me (or I would argue, most workers) being able to live wherever they want. Plus you would still have to live relatively close to a major airport or something (and I don't even know what that's going to look like yet post-covid). MAYBE it makes things better for a handful of relatively rich, highly paid workers/companies who don't mind spending significant time away from their families/homes, are happy to travel and who are willing to spring for regular accommodation for their workers, but I think for most workers springing for an office at home would be widely preferable. And I say that as someone who, pre-covid, had to do a couple of nights per couple-of-months away from my family because my employer's work was already distributed around the nation...(honestly, the travel was personally one of the worst aspects of my job, though I know other people loved it). Now with covid, i'm bitten with the "not enough space at home" problem (though thank god we got an in-built study put in beforehand), but I no longer have to travel long distances or stay overnight at any of the interstate offices, which i personally find a blessing. But i'd take the all-remote or "two days in" model in preference...
- whitneydmt 6y agoplease tell me how i rank this page https://printcosmo.com/boxes/donut-boxes/ https://printcosmo.com/boxes/donut-boxes/
- youeseh 6y agoWe have a few generations worth of managers who lived and breathed on-site culture before Covid disrupted their entire approach to managing teams. Many have adapted to the new normal, but clearly many others are going to fight for the old ways until they're forced to change for good... or not. We'll see.
- gsaines 6y agoTLDR: the working arrangement you prefer is a personal preference and there is no right or wrong answer. I've personally made the choice to leave the Bay Area because I've been offered the opportunity to work fully remote and my wife and I have long wanted to live closer to family so my kids can know their grandparents. Longer Version: I've been carefully reading posts like this for a while and it's really telling how emotional commenters get about WFH. Obviously, it sucks for some, and it's great for others. I think both pro-on-site and pro-WFH folks get it partly right and partly wrong. In the short term, I suspect articles like this vastly overstate Covid's impact on office culture. Our society aligned on office work as the "solution" for working for many reasons, not all of which are sane, rational, or healthy, but here we are. Conversely, I think we're probably overlooking or at least understating the effect that covid will have in the long run. Small incremental change compounds rapidly and it seems clear that covid has turned an otherwise continuous curve of WFH realization into a step function. So my personal bet is that 2020 will see a collective sigh of relief as people stampede back into offices, only to realize that some people aren't coming back at all and others aren't coming back every day of the week. That realization will lead to some weird outcomes that are hard to predict, but don't lead back to office culture as it existed in 2019 even if it superficially appears the same. For my own part, I'm a product manager at a FAANG company and was given the opportunity to work remote permanently. I'm going to give it a try in 2021. We're moving to Texas to be closer to our family and live in a place that will make it financially easier for one or both of us to experiment with less lucrative employment in a couple of years. Will I be forced to return to the bay for work? Maybe. Do I want to come back? Not really. I think it's probably just cohort dynamics: if I were 25 and single, the Bay would still be a great place to live and grow my career. But I'm older, I've got a great marriage I want to continue prioritizing, I've got very young kids that are a handful, and priorities shift. I probably would have left the bay in the near future with or without covid!
- cblconfederate 6y ago> people aren't coming back at all and others aren't coming back every day of the week I think there will be chaos, with most of the work happening remotely, which itself creates problem (office colleague is constantly on zoom = constant annoyance for everyone). Remote and in-office are not very compatible , so i think after a while people will invent better collab tools to go fully remotely because it's the most rational thing to do.
- blaisio 6y agoHow do Googlers actually feel about all this? It seems to me that a lot of the reason you work there is the benefits at their offices. If they are cut, then it's like getting a pay cut.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoI hope (also for myself) that employees get a stipend for working from home; they need a workspace, internet access, electricity, etc to do their job effectively, which was previously provided by the employer at the office. If they downsize their offices they will be saving a lot of money; at least give part of that to the employees. I mean how much does an office for a single employee cost in SF?
- vl 6y agoMany Google offices were really overcrowded before COVID. For example, Kirkland office literally had desks in stairwells (I have no idea how they passed fire safety). This was the new low, but desks in the hallways are typical everywhere.
- ddlutz 6y agoI work in the kirkland office. It's definitely VERY (over)crowded there, although I never have seen a desk in a hallway.
- saalg 6y agoI agree, it seems like a big draw to work at Google are the benefits, and if these are reduced because of increased remote work, I wonder if more people will leave for competitors?
- headmelted 6y agoIf anything working from home has completely dispelled for me any notion that working in person in an office is anything more than an unnecessary performance drag. NOTE: Some people genuinely don't have space or peace at home to get work done, I'm not speaking about them here as they genuinely need a place away from home to get their work done. I've been there and I sympathise. But in terms of the rest of us, developers in particular, I'm getting so much more work done than I ever did in an office. I'm sure I'm speaking solely for myself here but there are people in this industry whose job function seems to mostly involve constantly distracting engineers from producing output by incessantly asking how things are coming along and filling everyone's day with meetings that achieve nothing other than breaking flow and sapping productivity. I didn't realise until I started working from home just how much of my day is leeched away like this and it's jaw dropping how much more productive I am when I can just pull my work for a day, actually do my work, and then get it committed. None of the above is me lamenting co-operating with other people or helping out other folks on a team. If anything I have more time to do that now. I read an article recently on BBC News that was interviewing a scrum master who was upset at having to work from home and was urging his company to bring people back to the office because he doesn't have as many "in person" opportunities to come up with spontaneous ideas for the product, and has less face-to-face contact with the developers in a day to ask how things are going. I would love to see a survey taken at a whole company level across multiple teams to see the balance of which roles are happier working from home and those who are not.
- lebaux 6y agoScrum masters were supposed to be a solution for broken corporate teamwork, while in reality, the real solution is staying at home and only meeting when necessary. I bet I wouldn't be too happy myself if COVID threatened not only my very life but my job as well.
- headmelted 6y agoIf we assume the person in question is really concerned about catching COVID, then in the scenario above they seem absolutely fine with putting their co-workers at risk for no reason at all.
- diegs 6y agoI don't believe making workplace changes based on data from the quarantine era makes any sense. Currently people are mostly stuck at home, so work from home is nothing like it is during normal times: * People are home all the time, so they have plenty of time to do chores and work. I know for many people "WFH day" is "oh look, I have a pile of laundry I'll just take care of really quickly..." day. * People don't have as many social options, so even if you're not as focused as you might be at the office, you also have more time to throw at work "after hours" * People can't cut out at 3 or 4 or whatever to go do fun things or start their weekend early, so you don't get the "WFH today because I'm taking a flight this afternoon" days which essentially are days off This is based on observation about myself and colleagues. I don't think we have evidence that once things return to normal people will be as productive as home (I don't also see evidence that people are being particularly productive right now--it's just too soon to see the long-term effects). This is of course based on small sample sizes of my observations and anecdotal, but it's also not speculation and seems to line up with a lot of other people's observations too. I also agree with a lot of the comments around this being yet another way to push the cost ($ and otherwise) to employees. You now need to furnish your own home office, find ways to get the kids out of the house, etc. Remote work can and does work, but I think it's situational on all sides (people that have the aptitude for it, companies that are invested in making it work, types of companies/roles where it can work)
- rmah 6y agoSounds like hot desking with new branding. This was tried by many companies (especially large consulting/professional services firms) back in the 1990's and people hated it. The lesson learned was that, when your employees do show up at their office, they feel like visitors. Maybe google can do it in a way that works but I have my doubts.
- nikolay 6y agoWell, that's why I never bother to respond to Google recruiters! Google is so full of itself but without the ads business, their continued errors in product and business development, their evil corp would have tanked their unhealthy ambitions long ago!