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In my experience, if the company says "we would prefer that you do this, but it's your choice" it means "We don't feel like we can make you do this for whatever

In my experience, if the company says "we would prefer that you do this, but it's your choice" it means "We don't feel like we can make you do this for whatever reason, but if you don't, you're Not a Team Player, and your career advancement ends here" Maybe Google is different, but I doubt it. Probably Google used to be different, and no longer is, and a bunch of people are going to be unpleasantly surprised.

IceMetalPunk 4y ago
"Preferred but optional, your choice" sounds like a perfect compromise to me. At my job, it's "three days in minimum or you're fired, and btw the other two are preferred as well".
pc86 4y ago
This is the conundrum, right? A lot of people dislike having no direction, especially with a lot of local people. My employer for example has one Thursday-Friday every month where the policy is basically "go into your local office, if you are within a commutable distance, and you want to go in." 'Commutable distance' is intentionally undefined, as the goal is for each person to decide whether they are a commutable distance or not. I had a job where I had a 50 minute commute but it was all back roads and I was going 50-60mph the entire time. It was fine, even enjoyable in nice weather. I've also had jobs where I sit on an interstate parking lot for 25 minutes each day and it was hell. "Preferred in-office" makes sense when it's not as you described. It all just boils down to how much you can trust your boss and their boss, and whether you believe the company will make a good faith effort to communicate policy changes to you effectively. There's always the risk of someone you've never met getting a promotion and all of a sudden the definition of "preferred" changes but isn't communicated.
davidguetta 4y ago
I mean you can't legitimately impose your suspicions, as founded as they could be about compagnies you know, on a compagny you don't. What answer do you want really ? It's good to be suspicious but you need to leave room for actual good policies.
- CommieBobDole 4y ago
  I can indeed legitimately impose my suspicions, because behavior of people with power in organizations does not exist in a vacuum and instead tends to follow certain lines based on human behavioral impulses, cultural factors, etc. Of course there are exceptions, but not preparing for fallout from not doing an optional but encouraged thing at work is sort of like showing up at work in your underwear because your new company might be a pants-optional company even though most companies aren't. In this case, if I were a Google employee looking to advance in the company, I would show up on the suggested days with a convincing-looking smile on my face. If I was already at a level where I didn't expect to advance further without changing companies, I would continue working from home and be prepared to be on the top of the list the next time layoffs came up.
  - davidguetta 4y ago
    I don't disagree with any of what you say but seeing the devil everywhere has drawbacks too, starting with possibly being plain wrong. In this specific case the policy came precisely because employees asked for it.. Also to speak your language, one of the reasons people propose WFH or other benefits is precisely because they feel they don't hold so much power in a market where SWE are in high demand. So they 'sort-of-expect' you to use the benefits as proof that you 'sort-of-value' them and will stay. That doesn't mean you won't have to s** d** to advance.
hgsgm 4y ago
whoomp12342 4y ago
eh its close but not the same. It says "you can work from home but you need to have a reason" basically.
koube 4y ago
In my experience direct management is much more impactful to lived experience than company policy. Every team will be different, and I can only speak to my own experience, not to the experience of anyone under a different manager. My higher ups have communicated that they're fine with people working from home, and you don't need to tell anyone, just mark your calendar that you're at home so people know to enter online meetings. People range from being in office the recommended 3 days a week, to 5 days a week, to rarely coming in, to never coming in ever, and I think people using any of these permutations are doing great. One additional detail on the company policy side, we do have available remote work and you do (at least initially) get paid the same moving to remote and staying in the same place. I know at least two people that have successfully applied to work remote and I believe the vast majority of people who applied were approved for remote work. I can't speak for people going for high level management positions but I assume things would be different there. Opinions are my own.
mattzito 4y ago
Google is a big company, it's very difficult to generalize about what the expectations are universally - and my statement was just about my little corner of it. Speaking for myself, I don't care at all whether people are in the office or not, and since I work in a totally different location from 80%+ of the team, I wouldn't know anyway unless we have a meeting together. I know that other peer managers I work with feel similarly. I've also been managing people in distributed locations for more than 20 years at this point, so perhaps I have more experience with it than others. I'm sure there are teams that handle things the way you describe - but I don't run one, and I won't work on one. For myself, I enjoy being in the office because I have small children at home and I find it more challenging to concentrate unless I lock myself away in my bedroom, and if that's what I'm going to do, I'd rather be in-office. That being said, I'm WFH tomorrow and Friday because I have some personal things to take care of that are easier to do from home. I also want to emphasize that we started off with a fully "you do you" philosophy, and we even pushed the managers on the team to make sure that they worked from home a few days a week at minimum to demonstrate that it was okay and model the behavior we wanted to encourage. My preference would be to keep it that way. As I said in my original post, though, after a few months we asked people what THEIR preference was, and they (by a significant majority) wanted more structure on when to be in the office. Not to HAVE to go to the office, but to know when to expect to find other people in the office, because people didn't like going to the office only to discover that only two people from a team of 10 were in the office, but 5 of the others had been in the day before. Some teams had already informally started agreeing on "default in-office" days on their own. We went to great lengths to try to emphasize that there is no obligation or expectation, but that if all other things are equal, these are the days when people should expect to find others on their team in office. Some teams (AFAIK) still pick one or two days a week to focus on in-office for themselves.

IceMetalPunk 4y ago

"Preferred but optional, your choice" sounds like a perfect compromise to me. At my job, it's "three days in minimum or you're fired, and btw the other two are preferred as well".

pc86 4y ago

This is the conundrum, right? A lot of people dislike having no direction, especially with a lot of local people. My employer for example has one Thursday-Friday every month where the policy is basically "go into your local office, if you are within a commutable distance, and you want to go in." 'Commutable distance' is intentionally undefined, as the goal is for each person to decide whether they are a commutable distance or not. I had a job where I had a 50 minute commute but it was all back roads and I was going 50-60mph the entire time. It was fine, even enjoyable in nice weather. I've also had jobs where I sit on an interstate parking lot for 25 minutes each day and it was hell. "Preferred in-office" makes sense when it's not as you described. It all just boils down to how much you can trust your boss and their boss, and whether you believe the company will make a good faith effort to communicate policy changes to you effectively. There's always the risk of someone you've never met getting a promotion and all of a sudden the definition of "preferred" changes but isn't communicated.

davidguetta 4y ago

I mean you can't legitimately impose your suspicions, as founded as they could be about compagnies you know, on a compagny you don't. What answer do you want really ? It's good to be suspicious but you need to leave room for actual good policies.

CommieBobDole 4y ago
I can indeed legitimately impose my suspicions, because behavior of people with power in organizations does not exist in a vacuum and instead tends to follow certain lines based on human behavioral impulses, cultural factors, etc. Of course there are exceptions, but not preparing for fallout from not doing an optional but encouraged thing at work is sort of like showing up at work in your underwear because your new company might be a pants-optional company even though most companies aren't. In this case, if I were a Google employee looking to advance in the company, I would show up on the suggested days with a convincing-looking smile on my face. If I was already at a level where I didn't expect to advance further without changing companies, I would continue working from home and be prepared to be on the top of the list the next time layoffs came up.
- davidguetta 4y ago
  I don't disagree with any of what you say but seeing the devil everywhere has drawbacks too, starting with possibly being plain wrong. In this specific case the policy came precisely because employees asked for it.. Also to speak your language, one of the reasons people propose WFH or other benefits is precisely because they feel they don't hold so much power in a market where SWE are in high demand. So they 'sort-of-expect' you to use the benefits as proof that you 'sort-of-value' them and will stay. That doesn't mean you won't have to s** d** to advance.

hgsgm 4y ago

whoomp12342 4y ago

eh its close but not the same. It says "you can work from home but you need to have a reason" basically.

koube 4y ago

In my experience direct management is much more impactful to lived experience than company policy. Every team will be different, and I can only speak to my own experience, not to the experience of anyone under a different manager. My higher ups have communicated that they're fine with people working from home, and you don't need to tell anyone, just mark your calendar that you're at home so people know to enter online meetings. People range from being in office the recommended 3 days a week, to 5 days a week, to rarely coming in, to never coming in ever, and I think people using any of these permutations are doing great. One additional detail on the company policy side, we do have available remote work and you do (at least initially) get paid the same moving to remote and staying in the same place. I know at least two people that have successfully applied to work remote and I believe the vast majority of people who applied were approved for remote work. I can't speak for people going for high level management positions but I assume things would be different there. Opinions are my own.

mattzito 4y ago

Google is a big company, it's very difficult to generalize about what the expectations are universally - and my statement was just about my little corner of it. Speaking for myself, I don't care at all whether people are in the office or not, and since I work in a totally different location from 80%+ of the team, I wouldn't know anyway unless we have a meeting together. I know that other peer managers I work with feel similarly. I've also been managing people in distributed locations for more than 20 years at this point, so perhaps I have more experience with it than others. I'm sure there are teams that handle things the way you describe - but I don't run one, and I won't work on one. For myself, I enjoy being in the office because I have small children at home and I find it more challenging to concentrate unless I lock myself away in my bedroom, and if that's what I'm going to do, I'd rather be in-office. That being said, I'm WFH tomorrow and Friday because I have some personal things to take care of that are easier to do from home. I also want to emphasize that we started off with a fully "you do you" philosophy, and we even pushed the managers on the team to make sure that they worked from home a few days a week at minimum to demonstrate that it was okay and model the behavior we wanted to encourage. My preference would be to keep it that way. As I said in my original post, though, after a few months we asked people what THEIR preference was, and they (by a significant majority) wanted more structure on when to be in the office. Not to HAVE to go to the office, but to know when to expect to find other people in the office, because people didn't like going to the office only to discover that only two people from a team of 10 were in the office, but 5 of the others had been in the day before. Some teams had already informally started agreeing on "default in-office" days on their own. We went to great lengths to try to emphasize that there is no obligation or expectation, but that if all other things are equal, these are the days when people should expect to find others on their team in office. Some teams (AFAIK) still pick one or two days a week to focus on in-office for themselves.