5 ms·

Google has the right to do this. Employees have the right to quit. It’s okay to want your team to be an actual team and not just a group of people getting paid

by ITB 3y ago

Google has the right to do this. Employees have the right to quit. It’s okay to want your team to be an actual team and not just a group of people getting paid by the same employer. Team building works better in person. Just because some aspects of it are inconvenient, it doesn’t make it not true. The fact that commuting sucks doesn’t remove the fact that in person interactions are important. I suspect that at a fundamental level most people here know in-person adds an important quality that is missing otherwise.

dmitrygr 3y ago
“I suspect that” = “I have no quantifiable evidence that”
- mvdtnz 3y ago
  This is a discussion forum. Opinions are welcome here.
  - beezlewax 3y ago
    So are facts and hard data proving one thing is better than the other. Most of us here are engineers of some description. I don't need some promotion-hunting manager obsessed with "optimizing team building" to micromanage how I work.
    - whywhywhywhy 3y ago
      No one is forcing you to work at a company that requires WFO so why does it matter.
      - beezlewax 3y ago
        Of course they're not. But when the conditions in my work are looking likely to change I'm going to want to know why. It's not much of an ask for these things to actually make sense when they effect our quality of life.
diob 3y ago
I disagree. Some of the best teams I've been on are full remote teams. Some of the worst teams I've been on were in person teams. It depends on the people and the company culture. I'd argue if a remote team is having problems, they'd have the same problems in person. I'd love to see some studies on it though I imagine it's tough. Take a team that's doing bad remote, bring them in, see if they improve. Or take a team that's high performing, make them remote and see if things go south. I'd be surprised if they did, my guess is great teams are great teams.
fnordpiglet 3y ago
I’d point to all team / guild / corp based online games and almost all OSS as counter examples. I’ve worked in remote or distributed teams all my career. What you refer to is an emergent reality and what you’re used to. It doesn’t make it invariantly true, and there are so many obvious counter examples of highly effective teams and organizations that are socially robust and incredibly more productive than corporate organized teams that it’s hard to take seriously that collocation on a daily or even regular basis is crucial for anything other than management feeling in control and people feeling comfortable that things haven’t changed. Reality is metrics over 2020-2022 don’t show a decrease in any aspect of productivity. As such, once the passions have cooled, companies will have a real uphill battle demonstrating corporate real estate expenses, which can be a significant percentage of expenses and capital tie up, are justified because “I suspect” and “I feel” and “our corporate culture” and all the other vague hand waving in the face of hard numbers.
ironmagma 3y ago
They’re important, but not important in any sense that a company normally cares about. We saw during the pandemic that output/profits can skyrocket when people are remote (contrary to the prevalent claims). It’s therefore not on the business to push forward.
afavour 3y ago
IMO there’s more nuance to it than that. Is a team that works in person 5 days a week five times as cohesive as a team that meets once a week? I don’t believe so. Pure anecdote but I currently work in the office two days a week and it could probably be one. That one day is productive in terms of team building, it’s basically an entire day of meetings, we all get lunch together etc. Most of the rest of the week is spent on more isolated work (including pair programming which I find works better remotely sometimes). Of course Google has the right to fire anyone that doesn’t do what they want. But I also think it’s fair for employees to question the level of in person commitment required beyond just “more in person = better”. (Not to mention plenty of FAANG teams are distributed. If you’re coming into the office just to join video calls with a different backdrop it’s fair to question why)
- 0xf8 3y ago
  I think you’re bang on. it’s a lot more subtle than the hard and fast rule manner in which the notion is most often put forth. It’s definitely myopically maladaptive to view it as a binary—in-person is always better than remote. There’s a spectrum—how frequently and in what amount is in-person interaction for a team actually needed to result in optimal productivity and collaborative workflow as a team collective? certainly not every marginal hour/day in person is accretive to the goal of optimal collective collaboration. so there’s an inflection point or plateau somewhere… which intuitively should vary depending on the underlying dynamics of a given team, are they a well oiled machine already? or is everyone just recently starting work together for the first time? what is the nature of the work process creative or technical or a mix? what are the inherent personalities comprising the team and how does that impact things?? etc. the relative determination of finding the right balance is an important and worth doing carefully, regardless of the corporate culture. especially if the argument is that effective team collaboration is of SUCH high importance that companies are happy to let go of human capital that isn’t on board with their proscribed mandate around remote work on the basis of its impact to their work life balance… if thats the case, then surely something that important is worth determining a bit more scientifically than “3 days in person minimum or gtfo”— applicable for all teams. all employees. surely if it is in fact so important, then it’s not credible to be so rigidly unthinking in determining the "optimal" policy. any company that isn't inclined to fully consider that notion, and establish a mandate "just because" shouldn't get to imply the mandate serves them best on any basis related to team productivity and collaboration, because its wholly unsubstantiated andnot credible. they are however free to establish any such mandate of course, without need substantiate it, but then i think we all need to be transparent about the factthat is is entirely arbitrary... not some baseless idealized notion of "optimal" FWIW my personal view (not suggesting it’s a universally established truth with consensus, just my opinion based on experience) is that ~some amount of in-person interaction is beneficial and optimal, even for experienced teams with well established workflows and a long standing track record of collective work. eventually if you never see one another in person, sosci dynamics will change, perhaps not always to the detriment of team productivity, but at least in a manner worth evaluating/considering. and I think the less time a team has spent together in person prior to collaborating remotely the more important it is to prioritize in person work. lastly i think the determination of the "optimal" policy mandate will necessarily be team-dependent. as such, i believe team managers should be empowered by the powers that be to figure out what the best strategy is for their team specifically, and be held accountable to the results perhaps... as a far more sensible approach than it being a universal corporate mandate from the top of the house.
beezlewax 3y ago
And if your team is highly functional already but working from home? What then? What is this nebulous team building you are referring to? I'd challenge you to prove anything you just said with hard data. Just because you say team building works better in person also doesn't hold weight without some evidence. Why 3 days a week? Who decided that was optimal? Why not 1 or 4 or 5? Why not 2 a month?
olliej 3y ago
Constructive dismissal is a thing. If google wants to get rid of more employees they can just fire them, but that costs them money, hence this BS. > Team building works better in person Can you cite the studies showing that this is (a) true, and (b) that better "team building" results in better output? Every actual study I've seen says that open office plans (what google uses) are objectively terrible for productivity, morale, and employee health, so if you're going make a claim you should be able to point to _some_ study supporting this. For (b) above, once of the biggest reasons for "team building" is to induce lower employment mobility so you can pay people less. > I suspect that at a fundamental level most people here know in-person adds an important quality that is missing otherwise. The whole reason this is a problem is that that is a fundamentally untrue statement. There are clearly people who prefer working in an office, and what we are getting here is that those people go "I can only do my job in an office, therefore everyone else needs to be in the office as well". I don't know how many times I'm going to need to say this: just because one group of employees isn't able to work without constant supervision, or depends on office life to provide a surrogate social life, or whatever, doesn't mean that isn't true of everyone.
SleepTwo 3y ago
You didn’t explain why “team building” is important. Often, I wonder if it’s people who are just plain lonely.
sacnoradhq 3y ago
There's zero business person in having an effectively remote worker go into the office when there team isn't anywhere in proximity. This is idiotic ass-in-seat mentality that doesn't scale compared to the globalized and mobile nature of modern workers.

by ITB 3y ago

dmitrygr 3y ago

“I suspect that” = “I have no quantifiable evidence that”

mvdtnz 3y ago
This is a discussion forum. Opinions are welcome here.
- beezlewax 3y ago
  So are facts and hard data proving one thing is better than the other. Most of us here are engineers of some description. I don't need some promotion-hunting manager obsessed with "optimizing team building" to micromanage how I work.
  - whywhywhywhy 3y ago
    No one is forcing you to work at a company that requires WFO so why does it matter.
    - beezlewax 3y ago
      Of course they're not. But when the conditions in my work are looking likely to change I'm going to want to know why. It's not much of an ask for these things to actually make sense when they effect our quality of life.

diob 3y ago

I disagree. Some of the best teams I've been on are full remote teams. Some of the worst teams I've been on were in person teams. It depends on the people and the company culture. I'd argue if a remote team is having problems, they'd have the same problems in person. I'd love to see some studies on it though I imagine it's tough. Take a team that's doing bad remote, bring them in, see if they improve. Or take a team that's high performing, make them remote and see if things go south. I'd be surprised if they did, my guess is great teams are great teams.

fnordpiglet 3y ago

I’d point to all team / guild / corp based online games and almost all OSS as counter examples. I’ve worked in remote or distributed teams all my career. What you refer to is an emergent reality and what you’re used to. It doesn’t make it invariantly true, and there are so many obvious counter examples of highly effective teams and organizations that are socially robust and incredibly more productive than corporate organized teams that it’s hard to take seriously that collocation on a daily or even regular basis is crucial for anything other than management feeling in control and people feeling comfortable that things haven’t changed. Reality is metrics over 2020-2022 don’t show a decrease in any aspect of productivity. As such, once the passions have cooled, companies will have a real uphill battle demonstrating corporate real estate expenses, which can be a significant percentage of expenses and capital tie up, are justified because “I suspect” and “I feel” and “our corporate culture” and all the other vague hand waving in the face of hard numbers.

ironmagma 3y ago

They’re important, but not important in any sense that a company normally cares about. We saw during the pandemic that output/profits can skyrocket when people are remote (contrary to the prevalent claims). It’s therefore not on the business to push forward.

afavour 3y ago

IMO there’s more nuance to it than that. Is a team that works in person 5 days a week five times as cohesive as a team that meets once a week? I don’t believe so. Pure anecdote but I currently work in the office two days a week and it could probably be one. That one day is productive in terms of team building, it’s basically an entire day of meetings, we all get lunch together etc. Most of the rest of the week is spent on more isolated work (including pair programming which I find works better remotely sometimes). Of course Google has the right to fire anyone that doesn’t do what they want. But I also think it’s fair for employees to question the level of in person commitment required beyond just “more in person = better”. (Not to mention plenty of FAANG teams are distributed. If you’re coming into the office just to join video calls with a different backdrop it’s fair to question why)

0xf8 3y ago
I think you’re bang on. it’s a lot more subtle than the hard and fast rule manner in which the notion is most often put forth. It’s definitely myopically maladaptive to view it as a binary—in-person is always better than remote. There’s a spectrum—how frequently and in what amount is in-person interaction for a team actually needed to result in optimal productivity and collaborative workflow as a team collective? certainly not every marginal hour/day in person is accretive to the goal of optimal collective collaboration. so there’s an inflection point or plateau somewhere… which intuitively should vary depending on the underlying dynamics of a given team, are they a well oiled machine already? or is everyone just recently starting work together for the first time? what is the nature of the work process creative or technical or a mix? what are the inherent personalities comprising the team and how does that impact things?? etc. the relative determination of finding the right balance is an important and worth doing carefully, regardless of the corporate culture. especially if the argument is that effective team collaboration is of SUCH high importance that companies are happy to let go of human capital that isn’t on board with their proscribed mandate around remote work on the basis of its impact to their work life balance… if thats the case, then surely something that important is worth determining a bit more scientifically than “3 days in person minimum or gtfo”— applicable for all teams. all employees. surely if it is in fact so important, then it’s not credible to be so rigidly unthinking in determining the "optimal" policy. any company that isn't inclined to fully consider that notion, and establish a mandate "just because" shouldn't get to imply the mandate serves them best on any basis related to team productivity and collaboration, because its wholly unsubstantiated andnot credible. they are however free to establish any such mandate of course, without need substantiate it, but then i think we all need to be transparent about the factthat is is entirely arbitrary... not some baseless idealized notion of "optimal" FWIW my personal view (not suggesting it’s a universally established truth with consensus, just my opinion based on experience) is that ~some amount of in-person interaction is beneficial and optimal, even for experienced teams with well established workflows and a long standing track record of collective work. eventually if you never see one another in person, sosci dynamics will change, perhaps not always to the detriment of team productivity, but at least in a manner worth evaluating/considering. and I think the less time a team has spent together in person prior to collaborating remotely the more important it is to prioritize in person work. lastly i think the determination of the "optimal" policy mandate will necessarily be team-dependent. as such, i believe team managers should be empowered by the powers that be to figure out what the best strategy is for their team specifically, and be held accountable to the results perhaps... as a far more sensible approach than it being a universal corporate mandate from the top of the house.

beezlewax 3y ago

And if your team is highly functional already but working from home? What then? What is this nebulous team building you are referring to? I'd challenge you to prove anything you just said with hard data. Just because you say team building works better in person also doesn't hold weight without some evidence. Why 3 days a week? Who decided that was optimal? Why not 1 or 4 or 5? Why not 2 a month?

olliej 3y ago

Constructive dismissal is a thing. If google wants to get rid of more employees they can just fire them, but that costs them money, hence this BS. > Team building works better in person Can you cite the studies showing that this is (a) true, and (b) that better "team building" results in better output? Every actual study I've seen says that open office plans (what google uses) are objectively terrible for productivity, morale, and employee health, so if you're going make a claim you should be able to point to _some_ study supporting this. For (b) above, once of the biggest reasons for "team building" is to induce lower employment mobility so you can pay people less. > I suspect that at a fundamental level most people here know in-person adds an important quality that is missing otherwise. The whole reason this is a problem is that that is a fundamentally untrue statement. There are clearly people who prefer working in an office, and what we are getting here is that those people go "I can only do my job in an office, therefore everyone else needs to be in the office as well". I don't know how many times I'm going to need to say this: just because one group of employees isn't able to work without constant supervision, or depends on office life to provide a surrogate social life, or whatever, doesn't mean that isn't true of everyone.

SleepTwo 3y ago

You didn’t explain why “team building” is important. Often, I wonder if it’s people who are just plain lonely.

sacnoradhq 3y ago

There's zero business person in having an effectively remote worker go into the office when there team isn't anywhere in proximity. This is idiotic ass-in-seat mentality that doesn't scale compared to the globalized and mobile nature of modern workers.