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It seems strange that Google management would push so hard on this. Nearly everyone I've spoken to has reported that WFH productivity has been equal, if not bet

• PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  > Nearly everyone I've spoken to has reported that WFH productivity has been equal, if not better than pre-pandemic. Certainly not the case for everyone. Many people are struggling to be productive at home, alone. Jobs that require more coordination are also at risk of slowing down. WFH is great for some, but it’s not a panacea.
  • hpoe 6y ago
    How many of them have slowed down b/c of the pandemic vs WFH? I can imagine a job being a lot harder if suddenly your children are home all day, heck my kids aren't even school age and my wife is home fulltime and I still sometimes have my little ones come in asking for juice or to help them put on their shirt, or something like that. Not to mention the additional stress and isolation that comes from all of the pandemic management measures, and the omnipresent low level fear. Honestly if WFH has even remained steady with in office in this hostile environment to me that is a pretty big indicator it is better for businesses.
    • skeeter2020 6y ago
      this matches my experience as a dev manager. We had a bump in productivity initially, probably due to a fully-charged battery of team combined with less disruptions, but now productivity has declined by all our quantative measures (deploys, cycle times, failure frequency,etc). These are all proxies and not prefectly isolated, but better than "gut feel"
  • Uberphallus 6y ago
    Exactly. I've lived both experiences: it was perfect for me when my son, few months old, was sleeping the most part of the day. But once a kid switches to 1 nap per day, it's impossible to have a schedule to have any kind of focused work. Day care here have long waiting lists and they've been closed for half of the pandemic anyway.
    • dont__panic 6y ago
      Wouldn't daycare present just as much of an issue if you started working from an office?
      • burnished 6y ago
        One parent works for money, one parent works to take care of the home/children is not an unusual situation.
      • robotresearcher 6y ago
        Less so when the daycares are fully open again.
• dboreham 6y ago
  Because above a certain level managers derive their sense of self-worth from the number of physical people surrounding them?
  • willcipriano 6y ago
    Something I've been thinking about is that your typical rank and file employees work is pretty transparent. I created 6 widgets, I served 4 customers, I wrote 100 lines of code. Middle management that isn't really true, they can mill around and informally talk with people as part of their work. If everyone is remote, middle management's efforts become much more measurable.
    • ok_coo 6y ago
      This is a good point. What I've noticed for our org is that it's much more apparent which managers are quality and are able to help out their team and more, and which where obviously just filling up their work days with meetings, and meetings about meetings. I feel that the latter are the type of managers who want everyone back in the office. I'm going to stay WFH, if my org want to keep me, that will be a requirement. My quality of life has jumped and I'm not moving back to a high COL city just because a manager wants facetime.
• spoonjim 6y ago
  “Productivity” is not something a person can measure themselves. Sure, some people may be closing bugs faster than when in the office. But productivity manifests itself in different ways over longer time periods. Is there a strong corporate culture? Are junior staff being mentored and trained? Are new product ideas like Chromecast being thought of and shipped? The individual employee is not going to be a reliable indicator for any of these questions.
  • Someone1234 6y ago
    You say that like senior management typically makes decisions based on data and facts, rather than the reality where they just shoot from the hip using their "gut." By the same logic implied here, we cannot trust senior management to know what they're doing. PS - Also Google's measures of productivity are terrible, that's why they keep starting/killing new projects ever other week, and killed their golden goose in their so-called "20-percent rule."
    • spoonjim 6y ago
      Yet somehow, these boneheads haven’t driven Google to bankruptcy yet, so I don’t think their decisionmaking authority is in immediate jeopardy.
      • seg_lol 6y ago
        You don't have to make good decisions when you are riding the Ads Rocket!
        • microtherion 6y ago
          There is a great deal of ruin in a FAANG, as Adam Smith would say.
    • elite_hackers3 6y ago
      This is one of the worst comments I’ve ever read.
• whateveracct 6y ago
  management doesn't feel useful unless they can see their team's butts in their seats
• spamizbad 6y ago
  You would think the rational thing to do would be to maximize productivity and minimize cost: You can get the same or greater productivity from WFH that you can from open-plan offices, with WFH being a huge cost saver to the business. But I do think company leadership likes the psychological aspect of everyone being in the office and are willing to take both a cost and productivity hit to fulfill this need.
• mc32 6y ago
  Google isn’t Yahoo for sure and I presume they have better ways to know if people are putting in work —but... Marissa Maier had the unfortunate discovery that many of her remote workers were ghost workers. On the payroll but not doing much. Some might have even had other full-time jobs. That’s bound to happen when you have large workforces. You have groups of people who make it so that productive people can’t have nice things. A kind of tragedy of the commons.
  • xhkkffbf 6y ago
    I worked with a guy on a project who was simultaneously running two developers teams in India on the side. He knew the local stack inside and out so he was incredibly useful, but he could generate his insights and do his job in 30-60 minutes each day. Was he WFH? Nope. He was running these teams from his desk in the cubicle farm. And he was relatively open about it too with management. But he knew so much that everyone kept him around.
    • intergalplan 6y ago
      How many CEOs and "founders" on LinkedIn list a half-dozen active projects, businesses, and roles (boards, "advisor"), and then blog about the "challenge" of balancing all that with family life, which they still manage to do just fine (the actual secret that cuts to the heart of how they manage that, but which won't make their blog post? None of their jobs demand much time, and they have secretaries and assistants) Getting bent out of shape when workers do it is just classist bullshit.
      • ghaff 6y ago
        I sometimes wonder if the widespread elimination of admins, even shared ones, for everyone below a fairly high level is a net positive. On the other hand, there's a lot more/better self-service capabilities these days and unless you have a dedicated admin who really knows you, having someone else do something for you can be more trouble than it's worth.
        • 6y ago
• jedimastert 6y ago
  > Nearly everyone I've spoken to has reported that WFH productivity has been equal, if not better than pre-pandemic. I feel like this should be taken with a grain of salt, depending on what your bubble looks like.
  • havkom 6y ago
    The workload of managers have probably increased as well. This may not be sustainable for all organizations?
• nunez 6y ago
  Not strange if you've worked there; they absolutely love centralizing people at their hubs and were _never_ WFH/remote friendly
  • ghaff 6y ago
    I know someone fairly well known in Web circles who got hired by Google. They were remote but there was clearly not a meeting of the minds. They apparently heard maybe move to SF someday but could stay remote as long as they wanted to. And Google apparently heard remote for (only) the immediate future. At some point I gather it became a matter of "This actually isn't optional" and they ended up leaving.
    • nunez 6y ago
      This doesn’t surprise me. They got bait and switched by their recruiter like I did. I learned later on that recruiters (mostly contracted out) are heavily incentivized to get as many people hired as possible, so them saying things that bend the truth makes sense
• Jiejeing 6y ago
  Apart from the "WFH is not good for everyone" (which I agree with, and there are many situations where people actively do not want to WFH), there is also the internal company cult, which makes top management believe that people stay at a job for the vibes and relationships. It is partly true, because not going to work and interacting with people all day will make you have less regrets about leaving for another company. This is not generally a huge factor (compared to, say, salary), but it exists. Managers with a lot of company cult thinking also believe that you get more attached to the company if they can see you everyday. At my company they are shocked that engineering talent is leaving despite the great financials results, and are trying to find an explanation. Apparently the "no raises this year" policy they set 6 months ago did not enter their radar.
• jfim 6y ago
  > Nearly everyone I've spoken to has reported that WFH productivity has been equal, if not better than pre-pandemic. Out of curiosity, how many of the people you have spoken to have kids? From my perspective, it seems the people without kids seem to handle working from home okay, but the ones with younger kids at home seem to struggle a lot.
  • zomgwat 6y ago
    I have young kids and WFH. They go to childcare/preschool during the day. For me, a flexible WFH schedule has been extremely helpful while starting a family. That said, I understand not everyone’s WFH environment is the same.
    • Uberphallus 6y ago
      I take the grandparent comment meant kids at home. In some areas day care have been closed. I first joked with my wife about finally being able to have sex during meetings at the start of the WFH mandate, but it actually turned out to be more about changing diapers during meetings, and general background screaming for most of the day.
• throwaway823882 6y ago
  > What possible upside could there be Taxes? Could be that municipalities gave them huge tax write-offs assuming they would bring lots of jobs to the area, and now they may have to write all that off if they don't bring people back. Management is also terrified of not having hands/eyes on people. They are already so disconnected from people and have no concept of how to manage remote work, that they literally feel powerless without an office to monitor/control their workers in. They can monitor when you sit down at your desk, monitor your internet access, phone calls, structure meetings, and enforce culture. Remote work forces them to admit that they won't have nearly as much control over their workforce.
  • coolspot 6y ago
    But Google managers don’t monitor you when in person.
    • throwaway823882 6y ago
      I mean the corporation, not individual managers.
• skeeter2020 6y ago
  I'm an engineering manager and everyone on my teams has a different specific vision of "perfect" but all want "more flexibility". I think we can do this but it's both (1) new and (2) more complicated. The bigger you are the more efficiency benefit to adopting a one size fits all approach, even if it fails some.
  • mLuby 6y ago
    Agreed, but I'd replace "flexibility" with "choice." The "choice" is whether to work in the office, or remotely, or a few days of each. Everyone gets what they want! Flexibility in this context tends to mean "all employees must do some of each every week." Worst of both worlds.
• sanderjd 6y ago
  I think it really is better to have everyone on a team doing the same thing. Fully remote teams work fine and fully in person teams work fine. The worst case scenario is an in person team with one remote person. When you get closer to 50/50, that is better but still not great. I think it is understandable that companies want to extend this recognition all the way to the company level. I don't like it, I think it's better (but harder, logistically) to handle it at a lower level, like within teams or product areas, but I can understand their thinking. I expect there to be a lot of self-sorting after the pandemic, between teams / divisions / companies that are remote and those that are in person.
• alexwilde 6y ago
  Having read Work Rules! by Laszlo Bock, It does not seem that strange to me... The Google culture and leadership, right or wrong, hold on to the belief that the spaces they cultivate, do more than just enhance productivity. For example, they believe that (regardless of how rare it may be) their spaces create opportunities for teams to bump into each other and build solutions/products out of that.
  • m4rtink 6y ago
    I think there is something to that - a lot of stuff used to come up from random encounter with other peopl in the company and yet that almost totally absent now. A lot of stuff seems like it is still coasting based on that momentum (eq. people you met at a conference or at lunch) yet new connections are not being made. That could be a problem over time unless people can met at the office again in some form and go to conferences. Or some remote form of that would be needed.
    • williamstein 6y ago
      Random encounters that lead to interesting things can happen when working from home. For example, I work on Jupyter and last week there was a "Jupyter realtime collaboration workshop" and at one point participants were randomly divided up into breakout groups. I ended up sharing and learning all kinds of interesting new things with a small group of random people I've never met before, and making important connections. It felt very much like the sort of random things that could happen in person, with the main difference being that it was even more efficient than it would be in an office or conference center.
      • m4rtink 6y ago
        Yeah, but that's the thing - you need to consciously organize such events. I'm sure remote only companies have always done such informal "mixer" events but companies that were not heavily into WFH might no be aware it's needed untill all the social inteaction based stuff thats currently coasting with inertia comes to a halt.
    • 6y ago
• lmkg 6y ago
  Think about the type of workplace that Google offers, and why they offer that. Professional kitchens, on-site laundry, the bikes, getting speakers to come in and give talks, all that stuff. Google wants to be more than just a job to its employees. They want "being a Googler" to be a part of their employees life and part of their identity. (I'm not saying this as criticism.) So, what would Google prefer: An upset Googler, or a happy productive person who is employed by Google? I can see why it might be easier to retain the former than the latter. Especially if they think this is a temporary thing that will blow over, and they might be right.
• justarandom 6y ago
  My company made a survey earlier this year about WFH. There was overwhelming support for it. Around 90 % want to work at least one day per week from home. A quarter want to work completely from home. Employer satisfaction went up a lot in 2020. Productivity, revenue, earnings and new hires reached unprecedented levels for the company. Management went over this in the virtual all-hands meeting. They acknowledged all the reports - 2020 being "The Best Year for The Company, Ever", 2021 on the same road. Then concluded with: "We don't like seeing all that empty office space, so everyone will be brought back as soon as possible". I'm not paraphrasing - they literally said they don't like empty offices.
  • krzepah 5y ago
    Direction out of touch with the importance of cultural well-being. At this point I'm not accepting talks with companies that do that and point them to their online onboarding and processes. If they are so lonely that they value what they see more than the work done then I have other companies and other priorities.
• globular-toast 6y ago
  This is how you know there are lots of people not doing much work who know their massive income depends on other people doing the work.
• OhNoMyqueen 6y ago
  > Nearly everyone I've spoken to has reported that WFH productivity has been equal, if not better than pre-pandemic. Labor productivity there is no doubt. Overall productivity is something else entirely, since it is optimized by reducing the amount of labor needed. I've seen projects being spared what would have been _months_ of useless labor because the right person was walking back from his coffee break and overheard some discussion he had an insight about. It's just an annecdote of course, but it's hard to evaluate the evolution of overall productivity when WFH. Especially since it depends on the existing culture of the company, so even success stories like Gitlab can't be used as a proof of anything.
• eitland 6y ago
  > Nearly everyone I've spoken to has reported that WFH productivity has been equal, if not better than pre-pandemic. Whats more: Late last year experienced search quality increased ever so slightly for me at least. Granted Google is not my default search engine anymore so I cannot say for sure but I still consult it sometimes. (The quality on Google and DDG has been about the same for me but it is easier to go from DDG and back than the other way around.)
• itronitron 6y ago
  >> What possible upside could there be that justifies forcing the issue.. ? You can think of it as a filter for identifying easy to control employees.
• jpollock 6y ago
  Yes, productivity increased in the short term. However, this was due to heroic efforts on the part of the teams. I know I worked crazy-ass hours last year. This was needed to cover for the rest of the team who were on 50% hours (or less if partner wasn't WFH) due to childcare requirements. Additionally, it emptied the pipeline. We implemented a lot of work that was queued up, but we are now stalling on product design and engineering design approvals where coordination and communication is key. The increase in productivity is achievable on the short term, but not long-term. My productivity this year has fallen off a cliff.
• mLuby 6y ago
  Concentrated vs diffuse costs: Execs and managers have inherently social jobs, so not having everyone in the office is a concentrated pain point for them compared to it being a minor inconvenience for most individual contributors. Conveniently for the execs, they also have concentrated power to decide this for themselves and ICs, whereas ICs have little collective power. Return to normal: Companies that don't return to office as soon as the pandemic recedes will have a much harder time justifying the move later (see Yahoo!). So if there's a time to dig in and fight, it's right now as the extraordinary situation of the pandemic ends, since whatever policy is in place then will likely stay in place for years after.
• KETpXDDzR 6y ago
  Why would anyone say that WFH has a bad/lower productivity? Engineers and managers are motivated to report high productivity (as long as it's inevitable) and since it's hard to measure it's easy to fake. I noticed that some of my colleagues do almost nothing since their supervisors are not checking. I definitely work less and am less productive, too. At least that's my feeling. Src: Located and working in bay area at FAANG company
• 0cean 6y ago
  Google did a study that showed in-person collaboration fosters innovation, which is key to success for software companies. This study is why Marissa Mayer banned remote work when she became CEO of Yahoo.
  • Aeronwen 6y ago
    I'm sure it helped make Yahoo what it is today.
• eivarv 6y ago
  I don't get it either. I actually sat in a management meeting not so long ago, where we all agreed that efficiency and productivity was higher than before (according to our metrics) – and still, one of the people present said that they missed being able to just pop up, look over direct reports' shoulders, etc. The rest of us confronted them with the fact that all of us – they too – had celebrated our progress moments earlier, and agreed employees delivered better than ever, but we were still unable to totally persuade them. I find that infuriating, and kind of frightening. Not only have managers all over the world done things like stuff people into open floor plans (despite the fact that it was never backed by science, and its selling points are now actually refuted by science), and thought that there is something "special" about physical co-location (ignoring the possibilities of video-conferencing for fifty years); They are now actively going against better knowledge because of their own need for the feeling of control (which they'll never achieve, of course – slackers will slack anywhere), and will continue to use butts in chairs as a metric.
  • ryandrake 6y ago
    > one of the people present said that they missed being able to just pop up, look over direct reports' shoulders, etc. Sadly, I think this is a huge part of it. Regardless of productivity, "I just want to stand up over my empire and hear the bustle of people in my org talking and doing! Visibly see the movement and activity of My People physically surrounding me, doing Business Things!"