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> We've proven that the big tech companies can go fully remote and not completely crash and burn, that's about it. Agreed. We've proven that big tech companies

> We've proven that the big tech companies can go fully remote and not completely crash and burn, that's about it. Agreed. We've proven that big tech companies can continue to be productive for up to two years going remote. I suspect that that doesn't generalize very well to being completely remote over the long term. It works well when you already have a bunch of personal relationships between teammates that were established while the company was in-person. And it works well for experienced people that have ramped up. But I think it's probably quite a bit harder for people to be productive when they are new to the company, less experienced, and don't have that existing foundation to build on. I think it's a solvable problem for companies that want to prioritize remote work, but I definitely don't think "managed to get through the past two years" means "it's a piece of cake".

pdimitar 5y ago
> I suspect that that doesn't generalize very well to being completely remote over the long term. And when I say I am now working 11 years remote and was always more productive compared to be before (9 years in offices) you'll immediately say "anecdotal evidence", right? Maybe look into your bias. It does look like you're trying to find scientific reasoning to support your subjective preference. That's not OK. Let's at least have an objective discussion. Demeaning the positive results of remote work by pettily narrowing down their results to super specific borders, while at the same time implying that office work is the go-to thing to do is not being objective.
craigie 5y ago
>works well when you already have a bunch of personal relationships between teammates that were established while the company was in-person. And it works well for experienced people that have ramped up. I think a key question here is how long and how often do you need to see someone to establish and maintain those relationships. There were exporters/importers and othe long distance businesses relationships for a long time, so I don't think its every day for years.
adenozine 5y ago
Luckily, there will be plenty of remote firms to scoop up all the engineers Google is about to hemorrhage. What a miserable work culture it must be for them to even have the nerve to declare this. Downvote away, I’ll be hiring some of them! ;-)
- tick_tock_tick 5y ago
  Of course they'll lose some people but an office is enough of a competitive advantage to justify it.
  - splitstud 5y ago
- dekhn 5y ago
  There is already a huge google engineer hemorrhage. A number of principal engineers and other folks I thought would be google lifers moved to snowflake. I don't expect this to affect Google's ability to continue to grow at 15-20%, though. There will be armies of younger people who still want to jumpstart their career there.
  - obviouslynotme 5y ago
    Google needs long tenure more than other companies due to its large reliance on in-house software. This is yet another move to shoot themselves in the foot. Luckily, network effects will keep them in business for another few decades.
    - scarface74 5y ago
      Every large tech company relies on “in house software”.
      - bitcharmer 5y ago
        Yes, but I can assure you there are vast differences. Worked for many tier 1 investment banks in the techiest corners of each org and some cases felt like startups with all the shiny new toys everyone else was using vs the dark ages of customized software straight from the nineties or some other entirely-in-house-built abomination in other places.
berg117 5y ago
There's a 95% chance that this is a disguised RIF. People they want to keep will be able to continue WFH if they want. People who are on the margins or destined for the Performance Improvement Camps will have to come in and warm seats if they want to eke out a year or two more of existence.
- geodel 5y ago
  This is quite sensible comment. I am sure not much liked here. At my work at very anti-remote employer, there are so many people who have obtained permanent remote. So I wouldn't be surprised people who Google thinks valuable would get individual arrangements and other who just themselves think they are valuable are in for rude surprise.
- Wiseacre 5y ago
  What is an RIF?
  - innocentoldguy 5y ago
    Reduction in Force.
  - dekhn 5y ago
    Reduction in Force. It's a term commonly used when companies are undergoing a large scale employee trimming. I don't think that google would do call it that. Probably just managers encouraged to increase the % of people who go on PIPs.
    - berg117 5y ago
      Probably just managers encouraged to increase the % of people who go on PIPs. That's how tech companies usually do layoffs. Rather than admit they overexpanded and have to cut people (or that they are cannibalizing their own people to boost executive compensation) they blame it on departing workers by increasing the PIP-rape cutoff.
      - 5y ago
taeric 5y ago
I'm not sure there is good evidence that tech was that productive the past couple of years by any work they were doing. Rather, they were the only game left in town.
julianlam 5y ago
> Agreed. We've proven that big tech companies can continue to be productive for up to two years going remote. This sentence amuses me a bit. Does that also mean that American Democracy has only been proven to work for up to 245 years? :-)
- stormbrew 5y ago
  I mean.. yes? Except not even that, really, because the actual modern structure of American democracy is really closer to 100-150 years old (ie. somewhere between the country being broken in half and the 17th amendment introducing elected senators). But in the grand scheme of "humans having governments" it's pretty short either way, honestly pretty proportional to 2 years vs. "humans having megacorporations".
- _carbyau_ 5y ago
  Well yes. But in that sense, the Democracy has gone through a full lifecycle of elections, candidates starting, candidates retiring etc etc such that all processes for doing it are tested. So you can have confidence that it can handle a lot of things. But not necessarily ALL possible things so it may well be that something comes along and kills it. Maybe in 10 years, maybe in 100000 years. But for now, it seems pretty stable. OP's point is that 2 years of remote work isn't a test that a company can successfully go through a lifecycle of a team of employees. You know, onboard a grad, get them up to speed, get useful productivity, maintain whatever system/documentation, have them leave AND repeat this until the original members of the team are all gone AND then check that things are still ticking along well. It may be that said companies are "going well" because there is 1 person left holding the fort while a bunch of new starters fumble around with their remote work, not getting up to speed properly. Unlikely maybe? But the point is that 2 years isn't a proper test of such working conditions. EDIT: remove political rub.
- 30minAdayHN 5y ago
  I think so. Systems like remote work, American Democracy are not simple enough to have a scientific proof to provide guarantees. So many factors that might not otherwise have affected the outcomes could affect an outcome in future. So the only fair statements are that remote work has been proven to work for 2 years and american democracy for 200ish years :-) This is quite fascinating
asdff 5y ago
Every single thread I see on this has this exact same comment. It's like a bot wrote it. Is it that hard to imagine that an onboarding experience remotely can actually be done well, or that you could actually make friends with people existing solely on zoom? I think people are making that assumption, just because it feels right or maybe because their own org is just throwing juniors by the wayside and hoping covid will end rather than thinking about how to train people electronically from the ground up. Remote work in a lot of roles, especially knowledge working, is just the way forward and will be how these things function in 50 years. Companies that are able to scout talent globally will simply out compete those that insist on a local labor pool. It makes no sense to perpetuate commuting, just in terms of the environmental damage it causes, when we've shown that this work can still be done without having to load a single ~200lb occupant and spend energy moving them + 3000lbs of metal around for two hours a day five days a week. If you are finding your juniors are falling behind, then step up instead of giving up and work hard to come up with a viable pipeline that isn't "well hopefully in two months we are back in the office." Plenty of companies and organizations and research groups have functioned entirely distributed for years now even before covid. It's not rocket science.
- trophycase 5y ago
  What if people don't want this tech pseudo-utopia? I understand where you're coming from and definitely agree that commuting is a problem but... we're already on the verge of a population crisis in developed nations, loneliness and alienation are at all time highs. I really really don't think that remote work is the utopia you imagine it to be. It's going to lead to more people who never leave their home or apartment, and maybe go days without interacting with people face to face.
  - BlargMcLarg 5y ago
    We don't know that yet, do we? For many, the exact forced socialization through work, commutes and office culture that's going on is what drains them to the point of isolating themselves afterwards. I expect most people no longer working under that system to find a way out of their social isolation, given the friction for those venues isn't too high. Maybe if we stop pushing people into a catch-all environment and give them time, money and means to solve their problems, they will.. solve their problems. All of those three have been dwindling over the past few years.
edgyquant 5y ago
I joined a new org earlier this year, fully remote, and my last gig was only a week in person before the pandemic started. I have also onboarded half a dozen juniors in the last few months, again all remote. Your comment is completely out of touch.
- unicornfinder 5y ago
  My company is fully remote, and whilst I'd agree that it's certainly doable to onboard people remotely (we've absolutely done this successfully), I would also say it really depends on the types of people and I suspect possibly the roles as well.
dmitrygr 5y ago
> It works well when you already have a bunch of personal relationships between teammates that were established while the company was in-person. Clearly you have no idea how much churn is common in SV. At google after a 2-year tenure your "percent" (what percent of SWE is newer than you) reaches 50%. What personal relationships do all those who were hired remote and never saw the inside of the office have?
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  This is made somewhat misleading by insane growth. Even if there is no churn your percent is still surprisingly high because of new hires that are coming from new headcount.
- rightbyte 5y ago
  That is just insane churn. There has to be so much wasted work when so much project knowledge is dropped. Two years is nothing. You just got warm in your cloths and started to perform. Edit: There most be impossible to have a stable engineering "culture" in such companies.
Salgat 5y ago
The typical tenure for many developers is 2-3 years. 2 years is a long time for a software company.
- adrianN 5y ago
  That really depends on the software company. There are plenty of places where two years as about two releases of the product.
  - unicornfinder 5y ago
    Indeed. Not to mention if you're at one of the bigger companies then you're more likely to change teams than leave the company entirely.

pdimitar 5y ago

> I suspect that that doesn't generalize very well to being completely remote over the long term. And when I say I am now working 11 years remote and was always more productive compared to be before (9 years in offices) you'll immediately say "anecdotal evidence", right? Maybe look into your bias. It does look like you're trying to find scientific reasoning to support your subjective preference. That's not OK. Let's at least have an objective discussion. Demeaning the positive results of remote work by pettily narrowing down their results to super specific borders, while at the same time implying that office work is the go-to thing to do is not being objective.

craigie 5y ago

>works well when you already have a bunch of personal relationships between teammates that were established while the company was in-person. And it works well for experienced people that have ramped up. I think a key question here is how long and how often do you need to see someone to establish and maintain those relationships. There were exporters/importers and othe long distance businesses relationships for a long time, so I don't think its every day for years.

adenozine 5y ago

Luckily, there will be plenty of remote firms to scoop up all the engineers Google is about to hemorrhage. What a miserable work culture it must be for them to even have the nerve to declare this. Downvote away, I’ll be hiring some of them! ;-)

tick_tock_tick 5y ago
Of course they'll lose some people but an office is enough of a competitive advantage to justify it.
- splitstud 5y ago
dekhn 5y ago
There is already a huge google engineer hemorrhage. A number of principal engineers and other folks I thought would be google lifers moved to snowflake. I don't expect this to affect Google's ability to continue to grow at 15-20%, though. There will be armies of younger people who still want to jumpstart their career there.
- obviouslynotme 5y ago
  Google needs long tenure more than other companies due to its large reliance on in-house software. This is yet another move to shoot themselves in the foot. Luckily, network effects will keep them in business for another few decades.
  - scarface74 5y ago
    Every large tech company relies on “in house software”.
    - bitcharmer 5y ago
      Yes, but I can assure you there are vast differences. Worked for many tier 1 investment banks in the techiest corners of each org and some cases felt like startups with all the shiny new toys everyone else was using vs the dark ages of customized software straight from the nineties or some other entirely-in-house-built abomination in other places.

berg117 5y ago

There's a 95% chance that this is a disguised RIF. People they want to keep will be able to continue WFH if they want. People who are on the margins or destined for the Performance Improvement Camps will have to come in and warm seats if they want to eke out a year or two more of existence.

geodel 5y ago
This is quite sensible comment. I am sure not much liked here. At my work at very anti-remote employer, there are so many people who have obtained permanent remote. So I wouldn't be surprised people who Google thinks valuable would get individual arrangements and other who just themselves think they are valuable are in for rude surprise.
Wiseacre 5y ago
What is an RIF?
- innocentoldguy 5y ago
  Reduction in Force.
- dekhn 5y ago
  Reduction in Force. It's a term commonly used when companies are undergoing a large scale employee trimming. I don't think that google would do call it that. Probably just managers encouraged to increase the % of people who go on PIPs.
  - berg117 5y ago
    Probably just managers encouraged to increase the % of people who go on PIPs. That's how tech companies usually do layoffs. Rather than admit they overexpanded and have to cut people (or that they are cannibalizing their own people to boost executive compensation) they blame it on departing workers by increasing the PIP-rape cutoff.
    - 5y ago

taeric 5y ago

I'm not sure there is good evidence that tech was that productive the past couple of years by any work they were doing. Rather, they were the only game left in town.

julianlam 5y ago

> Agreed. We've proven that big tech companies can continue to be productive for up to two years going remote. This sentence amuses me a bit. Does that also mean that American Democracy has only been proven to work for up to 245 years? :-)

stormbrew 5y ago
I mean.. yes? Except not even that, really, because the actual modern structure of American democracy is really closer to 100-150 years old (ie. somewhere between the country being broken in half and the 17th amendment introducing elected senators). But in the grand scheme of "humans having governments" it's pretty short either way, honestly pretty proportional to 2 years vs. "humans having megacorporations".
_carbyau_ 5y ago
Well yes. But in that sense, the Democracy has gone through a full lifecycle of elections, candidates starting, candidates retiring etc etc such that all processes for doing it are tested. So you can have confidence that it can handle a lot of things. But not necessarily ALL possible things so it may well be that something comes along and kills it. Maybe in 10 years, maybe in 100000 years. But for now, it seems pretty stable. OP's point is that 2 years of remote work isn't a test that a company can successfully go through a lifecycle of a team of employees. You know, onboard a grad, get them up to speed, get useful productivity, maintain whatever system/documentation, have them leave AND repeat this until the original members of the team are all gone AND then check that things are still ticking along well. It may be that said companies are "going well" because there is 1 person left holding the fort while a bunch of new starters fumble around with their remote work, not getting up to speed properly. Unlikely maybe? But the point is that 2 years isn't a proper test of such working conditions. EDIT: remove political rub.
30minAdayHN 5y ago
I think so. Systems like remote work, American Democracy are not simple enough to have a scientific proof to provide guarantees. So many factors that might not otherwise have affected the outcomes could affect an outcome in future. So the only fair statements are that remote work has been proven to work for 2 years and american democracy for 200ish years :-) This is quite fascinating

asdff 5y ago

Every single thread I see on this has this exact same comment. It's like a bot wrote it. Is it that hard to imagine that an onboarding experience remotely can actually be done well, or that you could actually make friends with people existing solely on zoom? I think people are making that assumption, just because it feels right or maybe because their own org is just throwing juniors by the wayside and hoping covid will end rather than thinking about how to train people electronically from the ground up. Remote work in a lot of roles, especially knowledge working, is just the way forward and will be how these things function in 50 years. Companies that are able to scout talent globally will simply out compete those that insist on a local labor pool. It makes no sense to perpetuate commuting, just in terms of the environmental damage it causes, when we've shown that this work can still be done without having to load a single ~200lb occupant and spend energy moving them + 3000lbs of metal around for two hours a day five days a week. If you are finding your juniors are falling behind, then step up instead of giving up and work hard to come up with a viable pipeline that isn't "well hopefully in two months we are back in the office." Plenty of companies and organizations and research groups have functioned entirely distributed for years now even before covid. It's not rocket science.

trophycase 5y ago
What if people don't want this tech pseudo-utopia? I understand where you're coming from and definitely agree that commuting is a problem but... we're already on the verge of a population crisis in developed nations, loneliness and alienation are at all time highs. I really really don't think that remote work is the utopia you imagine it to be. It's going to lead to more people who never leave their home or apartment, and maybe go days without interacting with people face to face.
- BlargMcLarg 5y ago
  We don't know that yet, do we? For many, the exact forced socialization through work, commutes and office culture that's going on is what drains them to the point of isolating themselves afterwards. I expect most people no longer working under that system to find a way out of their social isolation, given the friction for those venues isn't too high. Maybe if we stop pushing people into a catch-all environment and give them time, money and means to solve their problems, they will.. solve their problems. All of those three have been dwindling over the past few years.

edgyquant 5y ago

I joined a new org earlier this year, fully remote, and my last gig was only a week in person before the pandemic started. I have also onboarded half a dozen juniors in the last few months, again all remote. Your comment is completely out of touch.

unicornfinder 5y ago
My company is fully remote, and whilst I'd agree that it's certainly doable to onboard people remotely (we've absolutely done this successfully), I would also say it really depends on the types of people and I suspect possibly the roles as well.

dmitrygr 5y ago

> It works well when you already have a bunch of personal relationships between teammates that were established while the company was in-person. Clearly you have no idea how much churn is common in SV. At google after a 2-year tenure your "percent" (what percent of SWE is newer than you) reaches 50%. What personal relationships do all those who were hired remote and never saw the inside of the office have?

UncleMeat 5y ago
This is made somewhat misleading by insane growth. Even if there is no churn your percent is still surprisingly high because of new hires that are coming from new headcount.
rightbyte 5y ago
That is just insane churn. There has to be so much wasted work when so much project knowledge is dropped. Two years is nothing. You just got warm in your cloths and started to perform. Edit: There most be impossible to have a stable engineering "culture" in such companies.

Salgat 5y ago

The typical tenure for many developers is 2-3 years. 2 years is a long time for a software company.

adrianN 5y ago
That really depends on the software company. There are plenty of places where two years as about two releases of the product.
- unicornfinder 5y ago
  Indeed. Not to mention if you're at one of the bigger companies then you're more likely to change teams than leave the company entirely.