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A Hybrid Approach to Work

189 points by jader201 5y ago

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Google234 5y ago
That meeting room looks super uncomfortable and awkward. Why can’t they just use some simple criteria for coming back to work: if you have two vaccine shots + time for second shot you can come in to work (unless you have a medical/religious reason not to). Also, if everyone is vaccines can we do away with mask requirements?
- Aachen 5y ago
  > if everyone is vaccines can we do away with mask requirements? From my understanding, yes as soon as positive tests in the country (or some wide area you're likely to mingle with) are near zero. Until then, there is the risk of someone (not yet vaccinated) who carries the virus developing a mutation that can then try itself on the immune system of a vaccinated person (you). It'll spread if it's resistent, so we should avoid such contracts. As soon as we don't have it roaming around, I think we can do away with these precautions indeed.
  - deleted 5y ago
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- deleted 5y ago
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- anonporridge 5y ago
  > Also, if everyone is vaccines can we do away with mask requirements? We still don't have any hard evidence that the vaccine stops transmission. It's possible that it keeps you from getting sick while being an asymptomatic spreader. That's why we're still wearing masks even after vaccination until we have better understanding of how the vaccine affects transmission rates.
  - joshuamorton 5y ago
    > We still don't have any hard evidence that the vaccine stops transmission. It's possible that it keeps you from getting sick while being an asymptomatic spreader. Yes we do. I'm not sure that we have peer reviewed published A/B studies yet (but I think we do have some initial ones). But there is absolutely hard evidence that trasmissions rates decrease among vaccinated populations. We saw this with population level testing among groups that got vaccinated.
    - anonporridge 5y ago
      https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/20210326/covid-vaccine-spread-study https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/2021032...
      - joshuamorton 5y ago
        From the article: > Preliminary data points to substantially lower rates of transmission among vaccinated people. [the article then cites a study in Israel, which I was also referring to] That is some hard evidence. It may not be absolutely conclusive, but yes its evidence. We don't yet have a randomized controlled trial, which is the gold standard, yes. But we do have hard evidence.
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - slavapestov 5y ago
    > We still don't have any hard evidence that the vaccine stops transmission. It's possible that it keeps you from getting sick while being an asymptomatic spreader. We absolutely do and such studies exist, and furthermore you can see a rapid decline in new cases in countries that have achieved high vaccine coverage, which would not have occurred if vaccines did not prevent onward transmission.
    - anonporridge 5y ago
- qshaman 5y ago
  We will be using masks until either someone breaks the ice and people just get over it or most states rollback the mask mandate. Could be months or years.
  - Google234 5y ago
    Looks like the cdc now disagrees :p
nautilus12 5y ago
This is because more than 20% of googles workforce said that they'd quit if they made them come back to office. It's a kind of compromise
yamellasmallela 5y ago
This is really stupid. Most people do not need to be in an office to get work done. Google, and all these other tech companies, made record profits this year. I just don't get why they insist on keeping people in a seat? At least for google, offering all these on-site only perks is just a scheme to keep employees at work for as long as possible.
- davidmargolin 5y ago
  did you even read it? Google is committing to offering fully remote opportunities now.
  - covfefeblack 5y ago
    Some remote opportunities*
  - ssharp 5y ago
    They are offering some, whereas other roles are clearly needing to adapt to some consistent in-office time. It will be interesting to see how all this ultimately plays out. My best guess is that companies like Shopify, who are fully committing to remote work, with in-office options, are going to end up with better retention. However, it also seems plausible that places requiring in-office schedules will simply attract people wanting that and the places offering remote will attract people wanting that. From what I see, there is a pretty clear line in the sand between folks that want an office and folks that don't. While a 3/2 hybrid schedule may be better than in the office 5 days a week, it's still quite a bit worse than being remote 5 days a week if that's your preference. I've been working remotely for the past three years and it's crazy to think back how relatively rare of an opportunity it was when I started doing it. It's everywhere now and a ton of people across the world have gotten the opportunity to try it out. You hear a lot about how COVID accelerated a lot transformations by 3-5 years. I think it accelerated remote work by at least a decade, probably more.
  - wildrhythms 5y ago
    Why not give employees the choice? Google already claims to hire 'the best'; do they not trust 'the best' to capably manage their own productivity wrt wherever they decide to work?
mycentstoo 5y ago
It will be interesting to see the impact of this on the broader tech community.
koch 5y ago
> reset days I think it's time we admit that a five day work week is counterproductive. Even Google notices this but is probably too big to make that change to a shorter work week; the best they can do is "reset days." Smaller companies seem to be doing fine with a shorter week.[1] [1] Buffer comes to mind first, other examples on 4dayweek.io
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  In Spain: "Under the plans, an estimated 200 to 400 Spanish companies will voluntarily take part in the project by reducing their employees’ working week to 32 hours while keeping their salaries the same. The government will compensate participating businesses for any higher costs incurred by the changes, such as the need to hire additional staff or to reorganize scheduling and shift patterns. That investment will be financed through Spain’s share of the EU Coronavirus Recovery Fund." https://reasonstobecheerful.world/spain-four-day-work-week-national-government/ https://reasonstobecheerful.world/spain-four-day-work-week-n... (check out the graph "Annual working hours per worker" and see which country has the fewest working hours annually; you might be surprised) And Microsoft Japan: https://www.npr.org/2019/11/04/776163853/microsoft-japan-says-4-day-workweek-boosted-workers-productivity-by-40 https://www.npr.org/2019/11/04/776163853/microsoft-japan-say... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26495933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26495933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21919721 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21919721
  - PragmaticPulp 5y ago
    > The government will compensate participating businesses for any higher costs incurred by the changes, such as the need to hire additional staff This is strange. They're paying companies to hire extra workers so everyone can work fewer hours? Sounds more like a jobs program than anything.
    - deleted 5y ago
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    - toomuchtodo 5y ago
nomoreplease 5y ago
> In fact, in places where we’ve been able to reopen Google offices in a voluntary capacity, we’ve seen nearly 60% of Googlers choosing to come back to the office. They don’t classify if that’s continuous or one-time to get a laptop replacement. I would guess the latter
- lamename 5y ago
  I would also add that 60% coming back doesn't necessarily mean those people prefer working in office full stop. It could be partly that, partly people enjoy flexibility but are tired of the monotony of home, or other factors. Ask that same 60% if they wanted a month of work from home pre-COVID and I'd bet on at least 33% saying yes, if not more.
  - nstart 5y ago
    +1 to this. Remote work vs work from home during pandemic times are very different experiences. The latter is definitely not pleasant in the long run. Even though I worked from home as a usual practice pre pandemic, breaking up the monotony with an occasional hot desking at some other place which may end with a board game night, or working a bit from a coffee shop, is the kind of thing that made remote work such a joy normally.
- what_ever 5y ago
  You don't need to go to office to get laptop replacement at Google..
deleted 5y ago
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softwaredoug 5y ago
> They’re testing new multi-purpose offices and private workspaces, and working with teams to develop advanced video technology that creates greater equity between employees in the office and those joining virtually. It just doesn't work when half of the team can walk by each other's desk, do some impromptu planning, and the other half are spread out across the world effectively uninvolved in these conversations. Nobody wants to go through the trouble of setting up a zoom for the 2 min conversation you have about a thing, or nobody is going to loop in a remote colleague when the team has lunch or coffee together. You either choose to be fully digital, and make digital communication the way work gets done, or you harm people out of the office. Maybe Google will make a miracle happen, but I've never seen "hybrid" work as optimal as either fully in office, or fully remote.
- bsilvereagle 5y ago
  > Nobody wants to go through the trouble of setting up a zoom for the 2 min conversation you have about a thing I have set aside 30 minute blocks on my calendar for "drop-ins" for exactly this flavor of conversation. I'm the only person on the invite list, but others know about its existence and will find the link on my calendar as needed. Sometimes no one shows up, other days the block turns into an impromptu large group brainstorm, other times it's back-to-back 2 min conversations.
  - Vaslo 5y ago
    With Microsoft Teams I just click a button and it calls the person instantly. I do this frequently for very short interactions and we can quickly yank more people in.
    - jmarcher 5y ago
      Same thing with Slack. I like the idea of open hours.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > You either choose to be fully digital, and make digital communication the way work gets done, or you harm people out of the office. I say this as someone who managed mixed distributed / WFH teams: If in-person conversations are an advantage (and they are), no company is going to willingly surrender them for the sake of catering to the people who aren't in the office. That doesn't mean teams can ignore the remote team members. It's everyone's responsibility to communicate and share information. However, there's no sense in reducing the efficiency of in-office employees just to level the playing field. The strategies that worked best for my teams were to structure the hires and the workloads according to who could work best together. For example, having an in-office back end team combined with a WFH front-end team works well, because the communication is naturally segmented across team boundaries anyway. On the other hand, if you put one of the front-end devs in the office with the back-end devs while everyone else is WFH, you need to be prepared to make that in-office person the team lead because they're going to become the primary communication point whether you want it or not. I love my mixed distributed/WFH teams, but I'll never deny that in-office communication still reigns supreme. That said, distributed can be made to work as long as you do your planning and structuring around the natural communication lines rather than trying to fight it.
dang 5y ago
Recent and related: Over the next year or so, Google will try out new office designs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27007898 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27007898 - May 2021 (179 comments)
sneak 5y ago
This is them walking back the permanent remote thing, is it not?
- setpatchaddress 5y ago
  I don't think Google committed to that. Other companies have.
- caturopath 5y ago
  The opposite, this is them walking back their commitment for across-the-board return to onsite.
cblconfederate 5y ago
it's futile as remote work is self-amplifying. The office is now gonna be the place where people go to work remotely. For a while
joshgel 5y ago
For what its worth, the A16Z boss talk podcast episode/clubhouse this week had everyone (incl Databricks CEO) basically agree with this model. Most people in the office 2-3 days/week. Some full remote. Seems like that is the way the valley is headed.
philsnow 5y ago
> We’ll also offer opportunities for you to apply for completely remote work (away from your team or office) based on your role and team needs. Before the pandemic, we had thousands of people working in locations separate from their core teams. I fully expect those numbers to increase in the coming months as we develop more remote roles, including fully all-remote sub teams. This is the most interesting bit that I saw. For a year+ the official stance has been that there won't be any more fully-remote work after the pandemic than there was before.
- fermentation 5y ago
  I'm assuming many folks would be scared away from going remote due to the career ramifications of their peers not going remote.
- throwawaygler1 5y ago
  10+ of my co-workers at Google have left for permanent wfh positions in the last month or so, I suspect that significantly influenced their decision to change their stance. Before that, their attitude was "people will vote with their feet" and when people started actually voting with their feet, this got announced pretty quickly.
  - xiphias2 5y ago
    My Googler friend already found remote jobs as he started looking a few months ago to go remote (moved from LA to Florida), and he says that he will probably move anyways as the other offers are great.
    - philsnow 5y ago
      I was taken aback by how much more relaxed I felt in general after going 100% remote, after spending 10+ years commuting up to 4 hours round trip per day in the SF bay area. My comp is lower now but it's easily a net win.
  - philsnow 5y ago
    I turned down a very good return offer with google because I knew I wanted to take a 100% remote job (and I let my recruiter know that). Yet another anecdata point.
jpm_sd 5y ago
> Whether you choose to transfer to a different office or opt for completely remote work, your compensation will be adjusted according to your new location. That's it, the end of geographic arbitrage. No more working from the mountains on a Silicon Valley salary. Hope everyone enjoyed it while it lasted.
- softwaredoug 5y ago
  Still the market will finally decide whether the arbitrage could work out. Plenty of companies aren’t changing pay based on where you live, namely Spotify.
  - andrewnc 5y ago
    And reddit as far as I know
- slavapestov 5y ago
  > That's it, the end of geographic arbitrage. No more working from the mountains on a Silicon Valley salary. Hope everyone enjoyed it while it lasted. Location-based pay has been the norm at Apple, Google and Facebook already.
- garet2 5y ago
  I don't know how Google is doing it, but the difference at some other companies is not that much. You're probably not getting sent down from 600k TC to 60k, even if that's the going rate for developers in Nowhere, Montana (if there even are any developer jobs there). Then, consider that much of compensation at higher levels is RSUs you've already been allocated for the next four years anyways.
  - slavapestov 5y ago
    > You're probably not getting sent down from 600k TC to 60k, even if that's the going rate for developers in Nowhere, Montana (if there even are any developer jobs there). Yeah. Anecdotally, the adjustment in pay within the USA at Big Cos is much lower than the differences in housing costs between SFBA and everywhere else. (Between countries is another matter though; several years ago I've heard of folks in Europe making 2x/3x less than their American peers. Not sure what the situation is today.)
yalogin 5y ago
3 days in the office and 2 days "where ever they want". This is meaningless. Either WFH completely or not, this in between thing doesn't work. Employees don't have the freedom to live where they want. All those dreams about Silicon Valley dispersing all over the country are just dashed. People still live close to work and they just get to stay home a couple days a week. That's all.
- wfhbata 5y ago
  “3 days in, 2 days out” is what they’ve been saying for a while. The news here is that they’ll allow some employees to work in remote offices, and some to go fully remote.
- closeparen 5y ago
  Focus time works as poorly in an open office as collaboration and community do from home. Mixing and matching plays each to its strength.
killjoywashere 5y ago
I lead/oversee a team of 7 that was built across 10 time zones, starting in 2017. The team got to its current size about 6 months before the pandemic hit. Three of us are fully remote, and there are two sub-teams of two in one city, separated by about 40 miles. We've got biz dev, ops, and software development (NLP and image analysis). We definitely dial people in if we need them, and there's a daily stand-up. So, we were built around a hybrid-ish sort of model from the beginning. I'm honestly not sure how the team would do if we were all together. I know we wouldn't have the same team, that's for sure. A couple of the folks couldn't have taken the jobs if a move had been required. I oversee work by a number of other teams, they are all working at the international level, and none of them are fully localized. If anything, the one thing I think may change with the pandemic is that people will develop less localization, and travel to visit teammates will become a thing. If I recall, Slack does this: they have everyone meet up once or twice a year. We did that at the beginning and it was super helpful.
draklor40 5y ago
"Pending approval from your manager/lead" - Corporate doublespeak for Don't even think about going full time remote. We are going to drag you back kicking and screaming.
- trhway 5y ago
  it is a typical corporate doublespeak and approach for stratification of perks - the higher strata would easily be granted the approval, no questions asked, while the lower - what you described.
  - draklor40 5y ago
    Restrictions apply to plebians only. Patricians are always exceptions :)
    - gota 5y ago
      Reminds me of the quote (from, of course, more grim contexts): "For my friends everything, for my enemies the law" Apparently by "Oscar R. Benavides, President of Peru from 1933 to 1939" (https://www.quora.com/Who-originally-said-To-my-friends-everything-to-my-enemies-the-law https://www.quora.com/Who-originally-said-To-my-friends-ever...)
- caturopath 5y ago
  I don't really agree. It's obviously purposefully non-committal, which makes sense, as Google leadership clearly is not inclined to want to be remote-first. Lots of stuff is really group-specific at many firms. Google aims to be more top-down than most companies its size about these sorts of things, but it's a valid model to say some-teams-this-is-acceptable-some-it-is-not.
philmcp 5y ago
Imo all jobs should also be offered as either 5 days or 4 days (@80% salary) as a minimum. The lack of flexibility annoyed me so much that I built https://4dayweek.io/ https://4dayweek.io/ Software jobs with a better work / life balance
- tebbers 5y ago
  This is great. In your experience, what % of companies simply pay the 80% for a 4 day week versus 100% of normal 5-day/week salary (i.e. no salary drop)?
  - philmcp 5y ago
    Thanks :) It's still early days regarding the 4 day week but more and more companies are making the switch. Of those who have switched, almost all of them have had no salary drop (e.g. Buffer.com) but admittedly there are only a handful of tech companies atm. From my perspective, I've been talking to companies and using the 80% salary as leverage - it's clearly not ideal but I think it may be a necessary first step to get more companies to make the switch. I'm also trying to convince companies to list their positions as "open to applications for a 4 day week", rather than advertised as a 4 day week Small steps...
- ddalex 5y ago
  Googler here - I speak for myself, not representing the company, yada yada yada... Google offers really easily 80% time for 80% salary, even for nooglers. You just have to ask for it, some of my friends here went for it straight away after being hired. Myself I'm on 90% (one every other Friday off) just because that's my optimal balance.
  - philmcp 5y ago
    Thats so cool! I wasn't aware of this. I wish more companies were as open as this to flexibility, it almost feels like a 'taboo' subject
dustinmoris 5y ago
For me personally this is the future of working: - No fixed offices. Companies rent smaller offies at co-working spaces (e.g. WeWorks) and pay their employees a WeWork pass so that they can hot desk from any WeWork across the world. - 3.5 days work, 3.5 days off. Ideal work week would be: Monday, Tuesday full days, Wednesday half day, Thursday full day, Friday, Saturday, Sunday off. - Everyone works from home and there is no fixed quota of people having to be anywhere. Each team can and should independently decide at which co-working space they want to meet and for which purpose. Everything is remote first set up though so that sharing and working over well established tools is the norm and not an afterthought. This new "hybrid" approach by Google is a tiny step forward, but still a LOOONG way away from the perfect work life balance and actually feels like a step backwards after the pandemic.

189 points by jader201 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

That meeting room looks super uncomfortable and awkward. Why can’t they just use some simple criteria for coming back to work: if you have two vaccine shots + time for second shot you can come in to work (unless you have a medical/religious reason not to). Also, if everyone is vaccines can we do away with mask requirements?

Aachen 5y ago
> if everyone is vaccines can we do away with mask requirements? From my understanding, yes as soon as positive tests in the country (or some wide area you're likely to mingle with) are near zero. Until then, there is the risk of someone (not yet vaccinated) who carries the virus developing a mutation that can then try itself on the immune system of a vaccinated person (you). It'll spread if it's resistent, so we should avoid such contracts. As soon as we don't have it roaming around, I think we can do away with these precautions indeed.
- deleted 5y ago
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deleted 5y ago
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anonporridge 5y ago
> Also, if everyone is vaccines can we do away with mask requirements? We still don't have any hard evidence that the vaccine stops transmission. It's possible that it keeps you from getting sick while being an asymptomatic spreader. That's why we're still wearing masks even after vaccination until we have better understanding of how the vaccine affects transmission rates.
- joshuamorton 5y ago
  > We still don't have any hard evidence that the vaccine stops transmission. It's possible that it keeps you from getting sick while being an asymptomatic spreader. Yes we do. I'm not sure that we have peer reviewed published A/B studies yet (but I think we do have some initial ones). But there is absolutely hard evidence that trasmissions rates decrease among vaccinated populations. We saw this with population level testing among groups that got vaccinated.
  - anonporridge 5y ago
    https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/20210326/covid-vaccine-spread-study https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/2021032...
    - joshuamorton 5y ago
      From the article: > Preliminary data points to substantially lower rates of transmission among vaccinated people. [the article then cites a study in Israel, which I was also referring to] That is some hard evidence. It may not be absolutely conclusive, but yes its evidence. We don't yet have a randomized controlled trial, which is the gold standard, yes. But we do have hard evidence.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- slavapestov 5y ago
  > We still don't have any hard evidence that the vaccine stops transmission. It's possible that it keeps you from getting sick while being an asymptomatic spreader. We absolutely do and such studies exist, and furthermore you can see a rapid decline in new cases in countries that have achieved high vaccine coverage, which would not have occurred if vaccines did not prevent onward transmission.
  - anonporridge 5y ago
qshaman 5y ago
We will be using masks until either someone breaks the ice and people just get over it or most states rollback the mask mandate. Could be months or years.
- Google234 5y ago
  Looks like the cdc now disagrees :p

nautilus12 5y ago

This is because more than 20% of googles workforce said that they'd quit if they made them come back to office. It's a kind of compromise

yamellasmallela 5y ago

This is really stupid. Most people do not need to be in an office to get work done. Google, and all these other tech companies, made record profits this year. I just don't get why they insist on keeping people in a seat? At least for google, offering all these on-site only perks is just a scheme to keep employees at work for as long as possible.

davidmargolin 5y ago
did you even read it? Google is committing to offering fully remote opportunities now.
- covfefeblack 5y ago
  Some remote opportunities*
- ssharp 5y ago
  They are offering some, whereas other roles are clearly needing to adapt to some consistent in-office time. It will be interesting to see how all this ultimately plays out. My best guess is that companies like Shopify, who are fully committing to remote work, with in-office options, are going to end up with better retention. However, it also seems plausible that places requiring in-office schedules will simply attract people wanting that and the places offering remote will attract people wanting that. From what I see, there is a pretty clear line in the sand between folks that want an office and folks that don't. While a 3/2 hybrid schedule may be better than in the office 5 days a week, it's still quite a bit worse than being remote 5 days a week if that's your preference. I've been working remotely for the past three years and it's crazy to think back how relatively rare of an opportunity it was when I started doing it. It's everywhere now and a ton of people across the world have gotten the opportunity to try it out. You hear a lot about how COVID accelerated a lot transformations by 3-5 years. I think it accelerated remote work by at least a decade, probably more.
- wildrhythms 5y ago
  Why not give employees the choice? Google already claims to hire 'the best'; do they not trust 'the best' to capably manage their own productivity wrt wherever they decide to work?

mycentstoo 5y ago

It will be interesting to see the impact of this on the broader tech community.

koch 5y ago

> reset days I think it's time we admit that a five day work week is counterproductive. Even Google notices this but is probably too big to make that change to a shorter work week; the best they can do is "reset days." Smaller companies seem to be doing fine with a shorter week.[1] [1] Buffer comes to mind first, other examples on 4dayweek.io

toomuchtodo 5y ago
In Spain: "Under the plans, an estimated 200 to 400 Spanish companies will voluntarily take part in the project by reducing their employees’ working week to 32 hours while keeping their salaries the same. The government will compensate participating businesses for any higher costs incurred by the changes, such as the need to hire additional staff or to reorganize scheduling and shift patterns. That investment will be financed through Spain’s share of the EU Coronavirus Recovery Fund." https://reasonstobecheerful.world/spain-four-day-work-week-national-government/ https://reasonstobecheerful.world/spain-four-day-work-week-n... (check out the graph "Annual working hours per worker" and see which country has the fewest working hours annually; you might be surprised) And Microsoft Japan: https://www.npr.org/2019/11/04/776163853/microsoft-japan-says-4-day-workweek-boosted-workers-productivity-by-40 https://www.npr.org/2019/11/04/776163853/microsoft-japan-say... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26495933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26495933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21919721 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21919721
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > The government will compensate participating businesses for any higher costs incurred by the changes, such as the need to hire additional staff This is strange. They're paying companies to hire extra workers so everyone can work fewer hours? Sounds more like a jobs program than anything.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago

nomoreplease 5y ago

> In fact, in places where we’ve been able to reopen Google offices in a voluntary capacity, we’ve seen nearly 60% of Googlers choosing to come back to the office. They don’t classify if that’s continuous or one-time to get a laptop replacement. I would guess the latter

lamename 5y ago
I would also add that 60% coming back doesn't necessarily mean those people prefer working in office full stop. It could be partly that, partly people enjoy flexibility but are tired of the monotony of home, or other factors. Ask that same 60% if they wanted a month of work from home pre-COVID and I'd bet on at least 33% saying yes, if not more.
- nstart 5y ago
  +1 to this. Remote work vs work from home during pandemic times are very different experiences. The latter is definitely not pleasant in the long run. Even though I worked from home as a usual practice pre pandemic, breaking up the monotony with an occasional hot desking at some other place which may end with a board game night, or working a bit from a coffee shop, is the kind of thing that made remote work such a joy normally.
what_ever 5y ago
You don't need to go to office to get laptop replacement at Google..

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

softwaredoug 5y ago

> They’re testing new multi-purpose offices and private workspaces, and working with teams to develop advanced video technology that creates greater equity between employees in the office and those joining virtually. It just doesn't work when half of the team can walk by each other's desk, do some impromptu planning, and the other half are spread out across the world effectively uninvolved in these conversations. Nobody wants to go through the trouble of setting up a zoom for the 2 min conversation you have about a thing, or nobody is going to loop in a remote colleague when the team has lunch or coffee together. You either choose to be fully digital, and make digital communication the way work gets done, or you harm people out of the office. Maybe Google will make a miracle happen, but I've never seen "hybrid" work as optimal as either fully in office, or fully remote.

bsilvereagle 5y ago
> Nobody wants to go through the trouble of setting up a zoom for the 2 min conversation you have about a thing I have set aside 30 minute blocks on my calendar for "drop-ins" for exactly this flavor of conversation. I'm the only person on the invite list, but others know about its existence and will find the link on my calendar as needed. Sometimes no one shows up, other days the block turns into an impromptu large group brainstorm, other times it's back-to-back 2 min conversations.
- Vaslo 5y ago
  With Microsoft Teams I just click a button and it calls the person instantly. I do this frequently for very short interactions and we can quickly yank more people in.
  - jmarcher 5y ago
    Same thing with Slack. I like the idea of open hours.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> You either choose to be fully digital, and make digital communication the way work gets done, or you harm people out of the office. I say this as someone who managed mixed distributed / WFH teams: If in-person conversations are an advantage (and they are), no company is going to willingly surrender them for the sake of catering to the people who aren't in the office. That doesn't mean teams can ignore the remote team members. It's everyone's responsibility to communicate and share information. However, there's no sense in reducing the efficiency of in-office employees just to level the playing field. The strategies that worked best for my teams were to structure the hires and the workloads according to who could work best together. For example, having an in-office back end team combined with a WFH front-end team works well, because the communication is naturally segmented across team boundaries anyway. On the other hand, if you put one of the front-end devs in the office with the back-end devs while everyone else is WFH, you need to be prepared to make that in-office person the team lead because they're going to become the primary communication point whether you want it or not. I love my mixed distributed/WFH teams, but I'll never deny that in-office communication still reigns supreme. That said, distributed can be made to work as long as you do your planning and structuring around the natural communication lines rather than trying to fight it.

dang 5y ago

Recent and related: Over the next year or so, Google will try out new office designs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27007898 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27007898 - May 2021 (179 comments)

sneak 5y ago

This is them walking back the permanent remote thing, is it not?

setpatchaddress 5y ago
I don't think Google committed to that. Other companies have.
caturopath 5y ago
The opposite, this is them walking back their commitment for across-the-board return to onsite.

cblconfederate 5y ago

it's futile as remote work is self-amplifying. The office is now gonna be the place where people go to work remotely. For a while

joshgel 5y ago

For what its worth, the A16Z boss talk podcast episode/clubhouse this week had everyone (incl Databricks CEO) basically agree with this model. Most people in the office 2-3 days/week. Some full remote. Seems like that is the way the valley is headed.

philsnow 5y ago

> We’ll also offer opportunities for you to apply for completely remote work (away from your team or office) based on your role and team needs. Before the pandemic, we had thousands of people working in locations separate from their core teams. I fully expect those numbers to increase in the coming months as we develop more remote roles, including fully all-remote sub teams. This is the most interesting bit that I saw. For a year+ the official stance has been that there won't be any more fully-remote work after the pandemic than there was before.

fermentation 5y ago
I'm assuming many folks would be scared away from going remote due to the career ramifications of their peers not going remote.
throwawaygler1 5y ago
10+ of my co-workers at Google have left for permanent wfh positions in the last month or so, I suspect that significantly influenced their decision to change their stance. Before that, their attitude was "people will vote with their feet" and when people started actually voting with their feet, this got announced pretty quickly.
- xiphias2 5y ago
  My Googler friend already found remote jobs as he started looking a few months ago to go remote (moved from LA to Florida), and he says that he will probably move anyways as the other offers are great.
  - philsnow 5y ago
    I was taken aback by how much more relaxed I felt in general after going 100% remote, after spending 10+ years commuting up to 4 hours round trip per day in the SF bay area. My comp is lower now but it's easily a net win.
- philsnow 5y ago
  I turned down a very good return offer with google because I knew I wanted to take a 100% remote job (and I let my recruiter know that). Yet another anecdata point.

jpm_sd 5y ago

> Whether you choose to transfer to a different office or opt for completely remote work, your compensation will be adjusted according to your new location. That's it, the end of geographic arbitrage. No more working from the mountains on a Silicon Valley salary. Hope everyone enjoyed it while it lasted.

softwaredoug 5y ago
Still the market will finally decide whether the arbitrage could work out. Plenty of companies aren’t changing pay based on where you live, namely Spotify.
- andrewnc 5y ago
  And reddit as far as I know
slavapestov 5y ago
> That's it, the end of geographic arbitrage. No more working from the mountains on a Silicon Valley salary. Hope everyone enjoyed it while it lasted. Location-based pay has been the norm at Apple, Google and Facebook already.
garet2 5y ago
I don't know how Google is doing it, but the difference at some other companies is not that much. You're probably not getting sent down from 600k TC to 60k, even if that's the going rate for developers in Nowhere, Montana (if there even are any developer jobs there). Then, consider that much of compensation at higher levels is RSUs you've already been allocated for the next four years anyways.
- slavapestov 5y ago
  > You're probably not getting sent down from 600k TC to 60k, even if that's the going rate for developers in Nowhere, Montana (if there even are any developer jobs there). Yeah. Anecdotally, the adjustment in pay within the USA at Big Cos is much lower than the differences in housing costs between SFBA and everywhere else. (Between countries is another matter though; several years ago I've heard of folks in Europe making 2x/3x less than their American peers. Not sure what the situation is today.)

yalogin 5y ago

3 days in the office and 2 days "where ever they want". This is meaningless. Either WFH completely or not, this in between thing doesn't work. Employees don't have the freedom to live where they want. All those dreams about Silicon Valley dispersing all over the country are just dashed. People still live close to work and they just get to stay home a couple days a week. That's all.

wfhbata 5y ago
“3 days in, 2 days out” is what they’ve been saying for a while. The news here is that they’ll allow some employees to work in remote offices, and some to go fully remote.
closeparen 5y ago
Focus time works as poorly in an open office as collaboration and community do from home. Mixing and matching plays each to its strength.

killjoywashere 5y ago

I lead/oversee a team of 7 that was built across 10 time zones, starting in 2017. The team got to its current size about 6 months before the pandemic hit. Three of us are fully remote, and there are two sub-teams of two in one city, separated by about 40 miles. We've got biz dev, ops, and software development (NLP and image analysis). We definitely dial people in if we need them, and there's a daily stand-up. So, we were built around a hybrid-ish sort of model from the beginning. I'm honestly not sure how the team would do if we were all together. I know we wouldn't have the same team, that's for sure. A couple of the folks couldn't have taken the jobs if a move had been required. I oversee work by a number of other teams, they are all working at the international level, and none of them are fully localized. If anything, the one thing I think may change with the pandemic is that people will develop less localization, and travel to visit teammates will become a thing. If I recall, Slack does this: they have everyone meet up once or twice a year. We did that at the beginning and it was super helpful.

draklor40 5y ago

"Pending approval from your manager/lead" - Corporate doublespeak for Don't even think about going full time remote. We are going to drag you back kicking and screaming.

trhway 5y ago
it is a typical corporate doublespeak and approach for stratification of perks - the higher strata would easily be granted the approval, no questions asked, while the lower - what you described.
- draklor40 5y ago
  Restrictions apply to plebians only. Patricians are always exceptions :)
  - gota 5y ago
    Reminds me of the quote (from, of course, more grim contexts): "For my friends everything, for my enemies the law" Apparently by "Oscar R. Benavides, President of Peru from 1933 to 1939" (https://www.quora.com/Who-originally-said-To-my-friends-everything-to-my-enemies-the-law https://www.quora.com/Who-originally-said-To-my-friends-ever...)
caturopath 5y ago
I don't really agree. It's obviously purposefully non-committal, which makes sense, as Google leadership clearly is not inclined to want to be remote-first. Lots of stuff is really group-specific at many firms. Google aims to be more top-down than most companies its size about these sorts of things, but it's a valid model to say some-teams-this-is-acceptable-some-it-is-not.

philmcp 5y ago

Imo all jobs should also be offered as either 5 days or 4 days (@80% salary) as a minimum. The lack of flexibility annoyed me so much that I built https://4dayweek.io/ https://4dayweek.io/ Software jobs with a better work / life balance

tebbers 5y ago
This is great. In your experience, what % of companies simply pay the 80% for a 4 day week versus 100% of normal 5-day/week salary (i.e. no salary drop)?
- philmcp 5y ago
  Thanks :) It's still early days regarding the 4 day week but more and more companies are making the switch. Of those who have switched, almost all of them have had no salary drop (e.g. Buffer.com) but admittedly there are only a handful of tech companies atm. From my perspective, I've been talking to companies and using the 80% salary as leverage - it's clearly not ideal but I think it may be a necessary first step to get more companies to make the switch. I'm also trying to convince companies to list their positions as "open to applications for a 4 day week", rather than advertised as a 4 day week Small steps...
ddalex 5y ago
Googler here - I speak for myself, not representing the company, yada yada yada... Google offers really easily 80% time for 80% salary, even for nooglers. You just have to ask for it, some of my friends here went for it straight away after being hired. Myself I'm on 90% (one every other Friday off) just because that's my optimal balance.
- philmcp 5y ago
  Thats so cool! I wasn't aware of this. I wish more companies were as open as this to flexibility, it almost feels like a 'taboo' subject

dustinmoris 5y ago

For me personally this is the future of working: - No fixed offices. Companies rent smaller offies at co-working spaces (e.g. WeWorks) and pay their employees a WeWork pass so that they can hot desk from any WeWork across the world. - 3.5 days work, 3.5 days off. Ideal work week would be: Monday, Tuesday full days, Wednesday half day, Thursday full day, Friday, Saturday, Sunday off. - Everyone works from home and there is no fixed quota of people having to be anywhere. Each team can and should independently decide at which co-working space they want to meet and for which purpose. Everything is remote first set up though so that sharing and working over well established tools is the norm and not an afterthought. This new "hybrid" approach by Google is a tiny step forward, but still a LOOONG way away from the perfect work life balance and actually feels like a step backwards after the pandemic.