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Google delays mandatory return to office beyond Jan. 10
- kmdent 5y agoEveryone is pretending like the word mandatory isn't in the article. You don't HAVE to work from home. If you don't want to be around your kids, go into the office. Making people go into the office and risk long term damage or death from covid is absolutely insane.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Dedime 5y agoOh good. I've considered working for Google, I think they work on interesting things, but I've recently adopted the stance that I won't take jobs that don't allow me the freedom to work 100% remotely. I value that freedom too much, and there's many other companies out there that let me do that.
- flakiness 5y agoTo people like you: Go https://careers.google.com/ https://careers.google.com/ and tick "Show all remote-eligible jobs".
- UncleMeat 5y agoGoogle now offers fully remote roles. In my org, literally every single application for a transfer to fully remote was accepted.
- aix1 5y agoAnd, on top of that, office transfers are a thing. Half of my immediate team (including me) have applied to relocate to otherwise random international offices that would better suit our lifestyles, and all got approved. P.S. Fully remote would have also been an option. It's just not what we've chosen, for various reasons.
- vineyardmike 5y ago> random international offices Just curious where people chose? Were there any side affects ?
- aix1 5y agoBerlin, Dublin, Zürich. Pay & benefits are adjusted to be in line with anyone else employed by the company at the target office. Being able to pick a city where one actually wants to live is definitely an upside. Being a remote singleton with no nearby teammates might prove a downside, though in our case I doubt it will be all that significant. Other than that, ask me again in a year.
- slaw 5y agoIs it really fully remote? Or is it work from home only remote? Can you work from any country you choose?
- UncleMeat 5y agoI am located roughly 3,000 miles from my team and will never return to being within driving distance of any Google office. International is harder because of time zones, but it is an option.
- zffr 5y agoI got an offer from google a few months ago and during team matching several teams were open to allowing me to work remotely. I would recommend making your position clear with your recruiter at the beginning and they can help you find teams that will work for you.
- MisterBastahrd 5y agoYeah, my current stance is that moving on from my current role to an on-site position would require the next employer to compensate me well enough that it wouldn't make sense to even consider side gigs.
- seaman1921 5y agoheh..like you would get hired btw Google offers 100% remote.
- Tempest1981 5y ago> the company still encourages employees to continue coming in “where conditions allow, to reconnect with colleagues in person and start regaining the muscle memory of being in the office more regularly.” I'm sure I still have plenty of muscle memory...
- zibzab 5y agoSomethings you just don't want to remember. I mean, this is why some of us start drinking...
- jeppesen-io 5y agoYou joke, but me and several co-workers laughed together when we realized after a year and a half, we didn't know how to make small talk anymore. Or even talking felt awkward/forced the first few days It was pretty funny actually
- tjr225 5y agoIt sounds kinda sad.
- aabhay 5y agoI love in-office culture. I really, really do. However, I think the only real way to create team bonding in modern global organizations is the "on-site", a semi-regular team convergence to a specific place, often in a work-live environment or a mini office-park.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jeppesen-io 5y agoI'd agree, working at a multi county small company. Sometimes you just need to meet up. Particularly, if there's any language barrier. Eg. Native vs not native English speakers
- MisterBastahrd 5y agoNot from my experience. All you have to do to get that is to give them slack channels and allow them to speak freely in shared spaces. Everything will work itself out.
- ThrowawayR2 5y agoPeople are allowed to speak freely on the social Slack channels at my employer but they are all either dead silent or get at most 1-2 posts per week. There was a bit of activity at the beginning of the pandemic but it petered off to nothing.
- bink 5y agoI moved from a company that had very active private and social channels to a company that has almost no social communications at all. The channels exist but no one uses them. It's eerie. It makes me think either people are afraid of saying anything or they just don't like talking to their coworkers unless they have to.
- spike021 5y agoNot from my experience. We had all the Slack channels, work ones and social ones (memes, rant channels about work experiences, etc.). Nobody on my previous team ever used a single one. Only people in other teams across the org, and not full participation from them either. IMO nothing just "worked itself out", and is a good part of why I chose to leave.
- kbos87 5y agoI wouldn’t be willing to guess much about what the workplace will look like in 12 months. But longer term, I think coercing people to go back to the office is going to turn out to have been a seriously dated and misguided worldview.
- sieabahlpark 5y agoThe less incentive to move to a city the better.
- trustfundbaby 5y agoSomething good comes out of Omicron. woooo!
- lnsru 5y agoMy bosses dream about getting whole team to the office. Though having corona outbreak in the office would have 2 huge issues: operations would stop and the bosses would need very good explanations to the highest management. At the end one can enter the office only being vaccinated or after recovery and there is 100% home office option. I used it during hot project phase, but I feel a bit isolated not going at least a day a week to the office. My perfect schedule is slacking 2 days in the office and working hard 3 days from home. I am sure this will stay this way for years since virus is mutating. After omicron comes other variant for sure.
- wffurr 5y agoSurprising no one... It seemed like odd timing from the start with the expected post-holiday and winter surge.
- karmasimida 5y agoI am returning to office 1-2 days a week right now. I think it is pretty nice.
- iamjake648 5y agoThis is what I've been doing too, coordinated with other team members. We usually go in on planning or big meeting days. I sure don't want to go in every day but 2 - 3 days is perfect to get out of the house and see some new people.
- sg47 5y agoIs everyone back there? Maybe it's nice because it's quiet? That's how I felt when I went back but to imagine being with 1000s of people in there is scary
- cmrdporcupine 5y agoI'm in my office (Google Waterloo) about 3 days a week and yeah, it's pretty quiet. Maybe 20% capacity and I can always get an EV charger, which isn't normal. Right now this is awesome. I'd like to see more of my teammates, but I don't look forward to when the crowds return.
- karmasimida 5y ago> Is everyone back there? To some degree yes, everyone had at least back to the office to some extent on weekly basis, but people aren't all appearing at once on a single day, so it is still pretty nice and quiet. Definitely not crowded, the utilization isn't even close to 10% per my current experience.
- anonporridge 5y agoThis is the perfect compromise. Forcing your employees to commute to the office 5 days a week just isn't a tenable proposition anymore. Hell, even the 40 hour workweek is becoming less and less acceptable. 1-2 days a week is a perfectly reasonable amount of time to put up with in office bullshit and still get most of the benefit that comes with it.
- uptownfunk 5y agoI'm done with this WFH BS, need to get out of my house, the kids (I love them but separation make the heart grow fonder). I want to see human beings, talk, make conversation, see smiles, not communicate via text, slack, but human voice, human emotion.
- itsdrewmiller 5y agoAre you not allowed to return to your office at all? At our company the offices are open but no one is required to return.
- uptownfunk 5y agoYes that is the case with us as well.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y agoThat was going to be my question. At my company, if you wanna come in for more brown-nosing ( or networking, or collaboration, or whatever they wanna call it ), you absolutely can. You just let your boss know. The question is always whether the extroverts should dictate every aspect of company life.
- astrea 5y ago> if you wanna come in for more brown-nosing ( or networking, or collaboration, or whatever they wanna call it ) I find this line of thinking, which is very prevalent on HN, to be incredibly toxic. As if a social creature seeking to be amongst others is something disdainful or pathetic.
- ctoth 5y agoI think there's a significant difference between social creatures that are just craving socialization which we can trivially achieve outside of work and wanting to specifically hang out with your boss every day. If you can't see that difference I'm not sure how to communicate it to you though, but I don't think anyone is calling anyone pathetic for needing socialization.
- jgalt212 5y agoI think at this point it's pretty obvious that Big Tech wants the pandemic economy to last forever.
- sg47 5y agoI'll go back 2 days a week if they give me an office. I'm not working in an open space with 500 people on my floor.
- lucb1e 5y agoI mean, that was true before COVID as much as it is today. I don't need a private room with view, but open floor plan has never been good for anything.
- fartcannon 5y agoThis is one of the things that made me leave my previous job. The constant reminder of how catastrophically they can alter my life every few weeks was enough to break me down. Remove mandatory. Remove the constant, lurking threat. You're giving people untold anxiety.
- varelse 5y agoIf employers wish to give every single on-site worker their own individual independently ventilated office, I'm down for returning to the office. But that would cost money. As would daily rapid antigen tests for everyone coming into the office that day. Open Office floor plans already were Petri dishes for infection before the pandemic. Now they are an incremental risk factor for premature death. Who needs that? The world has changed. People trying to return to the before times will be foiled by biology itself. But also I 100% support people opting into going back to the office with zero protection or any liability for their employers should something unfortunate happen. They should be forced to sign a big release indicating they understand the risks and that they accept it is all on them.
- tdeck 5y ago> But also I 100% support people opting into going back to the office with zero protection or any liability for their employers should something unfortunate happen There's a legitimate concern about people being coerced into "volunteering" to return to the office by their employer. Perhaps not most people at Google, but even there some employees will be in a situation where their manager can bully them into the office.
- nradov 5y agoAll of that is pointless. You're inevitably going to be exposed to the virus many times throughout your life regardless of what your employer does. Whether you're exposed in the office or somewhere else hardly matters. Fortunately the vaccines and other treatments make the risk minimal. https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646 https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646
- sg47 5y agoI can choose to willingly not go into a closed space with 1000+ people. The risk of exposure is going to be higher in the office. I have no qualms with meeting my team for lunch or dinner or even a team offsite for a whole day once a month but the notion of coming into potential close contact with hundreds of people day to day is very scary.
- cat_plus_plus 5y agoOn one hand, I have pity on major cave syndrome in Silicon Valley. Kids are not going to sleepovers and are forced to do outdoor PE with masks on even if fully vaccinated. Adults are still not meeting their family or traveling on vacations. On the other hand, if hysteria gets me more work flexibility for as long as possible - thanks I guess? Just don't force me into your bubblewrap lifestyle.
- thehappypm 5y agoThere are people like that everywhere, but it’s definitely concentrated in the West’s liberal cities.
- bink 5y agoDo you live in the Valley or are you just making assumptions? Because this is not at all what I see around me.
- antoniuschan99 5y agoI’ve been thinking the pandemic has marked a shift in the next generation of tech giants. We might just see the next generation of these companies as being remote first or having no office. I mean if you think of the startup costs itself, monthly subscriptions to zoom slack or teams (or in the future, Meta in VR, eww) is much lower than the cost to rent an office. Added to the fact that Recently there is a lot of mention about web 3.0 and decentralized technology as disruptive technologies over the current incumbents (search, file sharing, social media, etc) Also, Remote first doesn’t mean Remote only. Offices still play a role, just a lesser one. And I guess it’s not a surprise, coworking spaces are more like “office-lite” and have been in existence for a while.
- bastardoperator 5y agoMeanwhile Microsoft has adopted full remote.
- slaw 5y agoThis is not true. You can work from home, but you cannot travel and work.