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Mandates? "Since last June, Google has approved nearly 14,000 employees globally to transfer to a new location or go fully remote, Casey said. About 15% of app
by jefb 5y ago
Mandates?
"Since last June, Google has approved nearly 14,000 employees globally to transfer to a new location or go fully remote, Casey said. About 15% of applications have been denied, he added."
"Employees not prepared to return April 4 also can seek a remote-work extension, Google said."
- qntty 5y agoI guess like most companies, return to office means show your hand see if you have enough power to convince them otherwise.
- ramesh31 5y agoMade my move to permanent remote last Fall, when it was becoming pretty clear that return to office was on the horizon. Sure enough, we're going back company wide starting this week. Really glad I did it while I could. I will never go back to a 9-5 daily commute ever again.
- d0gsg0w00f 5y agoI would hesitate to make such sweeping statements. As work returns to the office my prediction is that you'll end up with pockets of high functioning teams that are physically colocated and distributed teams will inevitably be at a disadvantage which will lead to them being relegated to "tolerate" despite the talent on those teams. It's not to say that distributed teams can't be high funtioning it just takes 3x the effort from a management perspective. Good management is in even higher demand than SWE skills. A good manager will gravitate towards teams that are colocated because they know they can be more effective for less effort. To level the playing field it has to be all colocated or all remote. Talent currently holds the cards because of demand but talent+colocation will always win in a contest.
- Wiseacre 5y agoI imagine over time the permanent employees will be "managed out".
- ramesh31 5y ago>To level the playing field it has to be all colocated or all remote. Completely agreed. The way I see my situation playing out is that all of the employees who went remote during COVID will be tolerated, but that the company culture will revert to in-office first. That will eventually lead to the remote cohort slowly being relegated to irrelevance and passed for promotion until they disappear (including myself) through attrition. When that happens I will start looking for 100% remote companies. But for now I really don't care though, as long as they are paying me a Bay Area salary to live in the midwest.
- weq 5y agoMy company was all in office culture until they could no longer hire or only hire really fresh/average workers in the local market. Ive been remotely for 4yrs (precovid), and promoted 3 times in that period. But im a SWE not a csuite or in hr or marketing. Your job is what you make of it. I personally see WFH as the progression brought about by the internet; not covid. Covid just sped up the transition that was already happening. Covid brought about collective PSTD which forced peoples hand like any other trauma in ones life. It was the reason people stopped putting off there happiness, for the dream of success.
- Amasuriel 5y agoI would like to point out that you also appear to be making sweeping statements. I don’t agree with you that colocated teams have an inherent advantage, or that they require more management to be productive than a remote team on average.
- somewhereoutth 5y agoI think you are overstating the importance of 'management'. In the modern world (i.e. not a factory or otherwise rote work) real business (and indeed societal) value is created due to the web of relationships between people who have at least some idea of what they are doing.
- shadowgovt 5y agoAnd as far as Google is concerned, that's always been true. I knew someone who worked and lived in a houseboat. She showed up to the office for meetings, but her job was sales so she didn't have much use for a desk anyway.
- edm0nd 5y agoThat doesnt make for good clickbait tho
- klyrs 5y agoHeadlines lack nuance, news at 11. But, since the quote lumps relocations in with remote work, it's hard to say how applicable it is to the headline.
- penjelly 5y agoi see your point but the language used actually suggests theyll be bringing people back in the future, even if they allow them to work remote now. "employees not prepared to return"? "remote work extension"? and transfers?
- w1nk 5y agoYou mean the language used by the website that gets paid for you to click on it?
- UncleMeat 5y agoMy job location literally says US-REMOTE-MY_STATE. I signed a new contract and everything. Yes, this could change if the CEO decides to ban remote work but there is no evidence that this would happen any time soon. "Big mean Google does mean thing" is an attractive headline for media outlets.
- paxys 5y agoA mandate which allows temporary exceptions is still a mandate.
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- advisedwang 5y agoIf you apply to go fully remote, that's not temporary.
- hinkley 5y agoWho approved that application? Your old manager?
- paxys 5y agoOnly 20% of Google staff even has that option, and not all of them get approved. The vast majority will not be able to work remotely.
- UncleMeat 5y agoI'm not aware of any engineering org that bans it, except smaller groups within orgs that are working on hardware. Where is your 20% number coming from?
- Sebguer 5y agoWell, you can probably start with the fact that the person you're replying to never said 20% of engineers.
- joshuamorton 5y agoEngineering is well over 20% of Google staff, so the point stands, and isn't the only org to allow remote work.
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- johnnyo 5y agoThat’s 10% of the employee base. If half of those transferred locations, that means 95% are coming back to the office.