[HN Gopher] Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, othe...
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Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from
April 4
Author : pseudolus
Score : 125 points
Date : 2022-03-02 21:38 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| bubblicious wrote:
| this is only for those who have opted to not be fully remote.
|
| those folks have a reserved physical desk / office space at which
| they will be required to go 3 days per week starting apr 4th.
| They may switch to fully remote but cannot keep a dedicated
| physical spot if they do so.
|
| source: googler
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Honestly that seems like a totally reasonable ask, assuming
| there are a reasonable number of flex desks for people who are
| nominally remote.
| itsangaris wrote:
| does going remote impact one's salary?
| ASinclair wrote:
| Yes, it's based on where you work. Though you can work remote
| from the same city as your current office and have no pay
| difference.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| Can you go remote within commute distance of the office and
| keep your salary? What's the limit?
|
| Living in Pleasanton is cheaper than living in Mountain
| View, but still commutable. Living in Tracy is cheaper
| still and people still commute to the Bay Area from there.
| Living in Fresno or Sacramento is even cheaper and farther
| but still some people will do that commute daily.
| brandonhorst wrote:
| It's all based off the CoL in county of your primary
| residence. Has nothing to do with the proximity to an
| office.
| jaredsohn wrote:
| Curious if companies pay differently based on county of
| primary residence if you commute to the office.
| cgdub wrote:
| Does that mean you would get paid less for living in
| Queens County instead of New York County?
| hinkley wrote:
| But if there is anywhere in the county that has escaped
| full IT gentrification because of poor commuter access,
| those prices are going to explode if they haven't
| already. Since median house price is a huge fraction of
| CoL calculations (and a frequent complaint among some
| economists), staying in county gets you a raise, if your
| friends do it too.
| googlerx wrote:
| Depends. Pay is based on location and is the same for in-
| office at location X or fully remote at location X.
| Relocating could impact pay up or down.
|
| https://www.vox.com/recode/22691275/googles-remote-work-
| home...
| WheatM wrote:
| whiplash451 wrote:
| Duolingo is also back to 3 days a week in the office, and their
| CEO seems happy about it.
| jdlyga wrote:
| I work for a large company, and my team has changed so much since
| before covid.
|
| Before Covid:
|
| 5 people in the same New York office, 1 remote in Europe
|
| Today:
|
| 2 in New York, 2 in California, 1 in Ohio, 1 in Europe
|
| There is no single office to return to. Though we could meet up
| with other coworkers on different teams and projects. But in
| essence we've become a remote team.
|
| Has anyone else's teams become geographically distributed since
| covid?
| TranquilMarmot wrote:
| This happened at my last job before I left. We had ~50
| employees working at an office in Seattle.
|
| The pandemic hit, we went remote, and there was basically a
| mass exodus out of Seattle. I think only about 20 people were
| still in Seattle by the time I left (for another job that's
| 100% remote with people scattered throughout the globe). It
| took the company almost two years to start adjusting
| salaries...
| BillSaysThis wrote:
| All of our Eng was in the Portland (OR) office pre-pandemic but
| now people have started spreading. Seattle, Bend (which at 3+
| hours is not commutable to Portland), and I even moved to
| Hawaii. No going back for us.
| awslattery wrote:
| COVID definitely helped push my recommendation that our small
| team move to full-remote, and start to transition to more
| asynchronous work. It's great being able to hire outside of our
| local market (especially for SWE talent), and we won't be
| renewing the lease on our albeit small office this year (moving
| to grant coworking or at-home furniture/equipment
| reimbursement).
| standardUser wrote:
| Absolutely. I'm at a mid-size startup based in SF and we went
| from a few remote engineers outside of the country to over half
| our team remote internationally and many of our longest-tenured
| US-based engineers moving to places like Oregon, Texas and
| Colorado. I moved to NYC. There will be no significant
| engineering presence in SF when our office finally reopens.
| hinkley wrote:
| Is that turnover or did people move to a better-for-them
| location and they're waiting to see if anyone calls their
| bluff?
|
| I recall someone pointing out that a Sun Microsystems office in
| Colorado existed because someone you might call a Staff or
| Principal Engineer today said, "I'm moving to Colorado. If you
| want to open an office there I'll keep working for you, but I'm
| moving to Colorado".
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| Yes, something similar happened with my team, although there
| was a consideration to allow some work to be remote before
| Covid, once it started that sealed the deal.
|
| It is strange to walk around an office and see a bunch of
| workstations, desks and PC's that are all setup to do work in
| person, but only the PC is being used remotely and the only
| other people in the building are a security guard or janitor.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Mine was before COVID. Still is now. I doubt I'll return to the
| office unless mandated. Either way, I'm in Zoom all day. Going
| to office doesn't mean face-to-face work for me. I might go in
| once a week or so just for lunch with friends.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Yes, similar situation at the startup I work for (which has
| also more than doubled in headcount since Covid started). The
| distributedness genie can't be put back in the bottle now,
| which has significant pros and cons. It does make a lot of
| things less efficient, but on the other hand, it also lets us
| hire good people who don't necessarily want to relocate to NYC.
| cokeandpepsi wrote:
| that's just for now, shelf-life for most employees is like 2
| years anyway.. a few years of hiring should sort out the
| problem
| somehnguy wrote:
| What problem?
|
| I'm full remote with teammates in various states across the
| US. We have no problems to speak of related to our locations.
|
| I refuse to ever work in an office again assuming my role
| doesn't require me to physically be at a location for reasons
| other than 'we want you to be'.
| floren wrote:
| A few months back I was talking to a manager at Adobe. He was
| making the case that obviously anyone who has moved away from the
| Bay Area should have their pay cut. He personally has not been in
| the office for a single day since spring 2020, but since he
| telecommutes from Berkeley rather than Omaha, he sees no reason
| to cut his own pay.
|
| Later that same day I spoke to someone who's managing at Stripe.
| Shortly after bragging that he frequently spends only 2 hours a
| day actually working, he expressed that full-time remote work
| will never work out because you can't tell if someone is actually
| contributing. I refrained from pointing out that ICs actually
| have targets to meet and code to produce, and that you can put
| them on a PIP if they fail to meet expectations, while he's busy
| proving that management can apparently get by just phoning in to
| the occasional meeting.
| colordrops wrote:
| Despite not making any sense, cost of living adjustments based
| on your location seem to be the trend that we are heading
| toward. If you contribute the same work, it seems that it
| shouldn't matter where you are located, but companies are
| sociopathic by nature and will reduce costs anywhere they can
| get away with it. This opens the door to the next step of
| having salaries match the lowest common denominator - if you
| can get good enough devs at a quarter of the cost, the salary
| will be that rate no matter where you live.
|
| Regarding not being able to tell whether someone is
| contributing if they aren't in person - this manager is just
| plain dumb, as they aren't measuring the right criteria.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| I find it interesting how well this tracks: From each
| according to [their] ability, to each according to [their]
| needs.
| eloff wrote:
| I don't think that's guaranteed. I work remotely and I just
| exclude companies that do cost-of-living adjustments. Those
| companies might end up paying less, but they also have fewer
| applicants to choose from. You tend to get what you pay for
| in life. Hiring is really difficult right now, it's not wise
| to make it more difficult by driving away applicants.
| cottager2 wrote:
| Engineers have targets to meet, but management still has to
| trust estimates and scopes provided by engineers.
| shmerl wrote:
| Bad shift. What's their problem?
| gitowiec wrote:
| That's good to be back in the office. For me it's only a week to
| start feeling bad. Loneliness, the same walls I live with family,
| no colleagues around to talk to. That's not for me. Sometimes I
| prefer to work from home, because I need to run some errands,
| from home I have better control. Everybody should have an option,
| or possibility to work from home some days in a week. But nothing
| replace morning coffee in the kitchen with colleagues!
| ipaddr wrote:
| I look forward to your post April 4 rant on traffic.
| paxys wrote:
| I see two reasons to go back to the office:
|
| 1. You need a physical space to work from.
|
| 2. Your entire team is at the office as well and you can
| collaborate with them face to face.
|
| I imagine 1 is not a concern for most people who have adapted to
| the situation over the last two years. And 2 requires that most
| of your team is local and agrees to come in as well, which I
| can't see being too likely.
|
| For me personally going back to the office and still sitting in
| video calls all day with a geographically distributed team makes
| zero sense. It is a lot more comfortable to do it from home.
| citizenkeen wrote:
| Lot of people saying they don't see the status quo returning in
| a thread about the status quo returning.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| _For me personally going back to the office and still sitting
| in video calls all day with a geographically distributed team
| makes zero sense. It is a lot more comfortable to do it from
| home._
|
| It's worse since we have an open office, so to do a video call
| you need to book one of the conference rooms that are in high
| demand, even the smallest rooms were perpetually booked even
| prior to the pandemic.
|
| At least when working from home, I can do a video call any time
| without having to find a room. And I think people have
| forgotten about commutes and lunch. Now meetings are booked
| anytime from 8am-6pm and assume people will be available
| anytime from home. But since some people commute earlier and
| some people commute later to miss traffic, if everyone's back
| in the office, the only safe window to book a meeting is
| 10am-12pm and 1pm-4pm
| vinnymac wrote:
| From my visits to Google's offices in Manhattan, I don't expect
| many who reside within the city, to resist this change. People
| will accept leaving their small city apartments and visiting the
| vast offices, with a plethora of services available as a welcome
| alternative after two years. It's those who've moved on from that
| lifestyle, and may have physically relocated, who will resist
| this change. They will be inclined to make an argument for
| working remotely, or work elsewhere, whatever works.
| librish wrote:
| I think anyone who's claiming that remote work has been "proven"
| to be better or worse is wrong. There are some studies but they
| use estimations and proxies, carrying the same flaws as doing
| performance reviews based on lines of code.
|
| We've proven that the big tech companies can go fully remote and
| not completely crash and burn, that's about it. Some people love
| the lack of commute and less semi-forced hanging out, some people
| hate onboarding on a new company as a remote person and so on and
| so on.
|
| I personally prefer a company where everyone's on site. I want to
| be able to quickly resolve any issues in person, not over voice
| call or slack, and I think that an environment where someone can
| tap me on the shoulder when they need help leads to overall
| higher productivity, even if individual productivity suffers
| temporarily.
| msoad wrote:
| Have you ever walked between buildings to catch a meeting? I
| remember this from my Google days and I hated it. Ironically at
| some point they were cool with video calling in from another
| building!!
| librish wrote:
| Yes, if I'm not colocated with my team then most of the
| advantages go away.
| _3u10 wrote:
| https://archive.fo/AfRlK
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| Do Googlers mind working in the office much? They get plenty of
| free meals/snacks/beverages, great equipment, and great salary
| allowing them to live close to the office and pay for childcare
| if needed. I can't see the rest of the industry moving in the
| direction of returning to the office, because they don't have
| these things.
| pinephoneguy wrote:
| Housing in SF is crazy expensive, commuting takes ages (and
| we've shown it's a complete waste) and a lot of people probably
| don't even want to live in California.
|
| Forget snacks, the amount of money you save by not living there
| and not commuting could _pay for an in house chef._
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| If the last 3 years are any indicator, living in SF and the
| west coast in general means putting up with 2-3 months of
| choking, dangerous wild fire smoke every year too. It was a
| novelty for one summer but is slowly going to poison and
| cause serious long term harm the more it continues. I don't
| think people realize how unlivable the west coast is quickly
| becoming.
| Psyonic wrote:
| This year, the smoke from the California fires was actually
| much worse in Colorado & Utah than the bay area proper. You
| can't necessarily escape this by moving.
| jeffbee wrote:
| True, but it's going to be bad some years. This year I
| expect an outright disaster, considering we've had the
| driest winter in 150+ years of recorded history. Probably
| it's going to be unbreathable at certain points.
| googlerx wrote:
| The perks are great, as is getting to chat with people face to
| face.
|
| But the open office is just fucking terrible for getting actual
| work done.
| paxys wrote:
| Different people have different priorities. It's usually the
| younger employees who prioritize free meals and ping pong over
| flexible work schedules and spending more time with family.
| api wrote:
| Outside the Bay Area you could buy your own perks that are much
| better than what Google provides and still afford a place to
| live that's orders of magnitude nicer.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| If you want my opinion, open space sucks and I can buy my own
| snacks. After one day at the office, I feel my head is about to
| explode. Constant noise, bright artificial lights...
|
| The only good thing is that I can have informal meetings with
| my colleagues, talk around the white board and so on... this is
| very valuable.
| e4e78a06 wrote:
| It feels very different when you have to pay for your own
| snacks. I definitely substantially moderated my consumption
| during remote work (and it's not like the amount they were
| spending on snacks gets paid to you either). It definitely
| improved my eating habits but I also miss free Diet Coke and
| protein shakes.
|
| If I was getting paid the snack amount in cash then I'd
| probably be ok but as is free breakfast+lunch+snacks saves me
| on the order of $500/mo. And as someone who is pretty
| mediocre at cooking the quality of food is better as well.
| gsich wrote:
| Commute sucks. Anything above 30min for one way is unbearable.
| not2b wrote:
| That's why I will continue to work from home. My old office
| is about 1/2 mile from Google HQ and pre-Covid it was 45-50
| minutes each way unless I stayed in the office quite late.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| googlerx wrote:
| 1/2 mile is like a 10 minute walk.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Note the article says this is 3 days a week. I also imagine
| there is a ton of flexibility at Google WRT hours so you can
| try to time it before or after rush hour.
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| I used to do 1h30m each way to and from work, five days a
| week before COVID :)
| mirntyfirty wrote:
| Does that include time it takes to park, walk to office,
| hop on elevator, and set up desk for the day. That can add
| a bit of time.
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| Door to door. 20 mins walking, 1 hour train, another 5-10
| walking.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I guess that's a matter of perspective. I used to drive
| 45mins one way under light traffic conditions. This was a
| choice made of keeping a decent paying job and living
| somewhere with ranked school system. Sometimes, sacrifices
| are made when thinking of others.
| googlerx wrote:
| Yeah traffic (or lack thereof) makes a massive difference.
| 45 min in light traffic... sure. 45 min each way, every
| day, in heavy, stop and go traffic is soul crushing.
| adonovan wrote:
| I used to complain about my subway commute, but when it
| stopped I found I missed reading books for 30m twice a day,
| or alternatively running to work. These activities formed a
| clear boundary to each workday that I have found hard to
| replace without a commute.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Pretty sure google has their own bus with internet /
| capability to work on the way.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| wasting 40+ min a day for a work-related commute still
| sucks, internet or not.
|
| -xoogler
| TranquilMarmot wrote:
| Pre-pandemic, my commute was walking 20 minutes and then
| taking a train for 10 minutes. I loved it so much!
|
| Now I just have a dog that I walk for a few hours every day
| instead haha.
| mzkply wrote:
| Yeah, even with the buses into Mountain View.
| olliej wrote:
| "Great salary allowing them to live close to the office" is an
| interesting way of phrasing "requiring you to unnecessarily
| live in ludicrously expensive areas".
|
| Honestly in my experience the work environment itself is not
| great - google has cubicle pens with half height walls, it
| super frustrating to work when people are continually going
| back and forth around you.
| nix0n wrote:
| Outside of Silicon Valley, it is possible to live close to the
| office without a FAANG level salary. Beverages and snacks also
| are not that rare.
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| Well, you'd have to be outside of most big cities. Even on a
| tech salary, living near an office in central London isn't
| affordable. Not unless you're flat sharing which is basically
| mutually exclusive with having a family.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| London is the only city in the UK where that's the case,
| and many boroughs are commutable - it's only really the
| centre that's a problem.
| snark42 wrote:
| It's probably completely do-able in the US except in the
| top 20 or so COL locations - https://www.numbeo.com/cost-
| of-living/region_rankings_curren...
| infamouscow wrote:
| After two years of not being in the office, I don't see how
| anyone can justify going into the office without putting
| themselves into a quagmire of hypocrisy and contradiction.
| foogazi wrote:
| What do you mean ?
| formerly_proven wrote:
| "Despite shipping more than ever and having higher velocity
| than ever before remote work clearly does not work hence you
| must return to the office"
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I do think there's something to be said for the long term
| culture effects remote work has. Maybe the current
| employees who used to work in the office are more efficient
| remote, but is the same true for new remote workers? What
| about in a few years when a large percentage of the
| employees may have never worked in the office at Google?
| barkerja wrote:
| I believe they mean from the perspective of the employer. If
| a team has been able to fully function these past two years
| and the employees prefer working from home, there's little --
| if any -- justification the employer can make for the return
| to office.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| Playing devil's advocate, because I enjoy remote working,
| but it's not the same thing to have a full team remote, and
| only half of the team.
| 09bjb wrote:
| $GOOG stock has pretty much doubled since the beginning of
| the pandemic, meaning the company has been having absolutely
| no trouble whatsoever doing its job with a fully remote
| workforce for 2 years now. They don't "need" employees to
| come back to the office.
| whiplash451 wrote:
| Two years aren't much at the time scale of Google. The
| effects of switching from in-person to remote (and vice-
| versa) are much longer term.
| Graffur wrote:
| I don't think the stock price reflects that too much. You
| can't attribute the doubling to workers being at home. If
| it dipped when workers went back to the office.. that also
| would not mean much.
| rr808 wrote:
| I'm going to strangle my wife and kids if I have to stay in my
| apartment with them another two years.
| Gigachad wrote:
| If I was working at Google I'd want to be in the office just
| for the experience. Know someone who did work at Google for a
| few years and he said he would often bump in to incredible
| people in the rec areas and get to talk to all kinds of
| interesting figures like the creator of Vim or some of the top
| brains of ML. It's a bit different when you are just pumping
| out some generic SaaS product and can do fine in isolation at
| home.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| I worked as well in the Zurich office where Bram was working,
| and it was amazing experience until they took out the walls
| and made open offices. I would never go back to an open
| office.
| onychomys wrote:
| I work for an extremely famous hospital in a small city in
| Minnesota, and we've gone 100% remote forever in large part
| because then the hospital doesn't have to pay for
| heating/lighting/internet/etc for all of the buildings that used
| to be full of us. Eventually they'll probably sell the offices
| entirely. I'm not sure why Google thinks it's economically worth
| it to have people come back in, I'd imagine the savings must be
| even more immense for them than it is for us.
| jonas21 wrote:
| I hope you don't mean the entire hospital has gone 100% remote.
| I'd not be happy if my surgeon was working from home.
| jolen33 wrote:
| For whatever it's worth, even with the salary cut remote
| employees are facing, the paybands for FAANG employees in
| (relatively) affordable cities are still top-of-market.
|
| For example, remote GOOG employees in Atlanta take a 10-20%
| salary cut compared to the Bay Area salaries. But the takehome is
| still higher (on average) than the takehome for the in-office Bay
| Area engineers.
|
| That's part of the reason why there has been such a huge influx
| of people to metros like Atlanta, Charlotte, Detroit, etc.
| jefb wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I guess like most companies, return to office means show your
| hand see if you have enough power to convince them otherwise.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| Made 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.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| And 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 wrote:
| That doesnt make for good clickbait tho
| klyrs wrote:
| Headlines 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 wrote:
| i 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 wrote:
| You mean the language used by the website that gets paid for
| you to click on it?
| paxys wrote:
| A mandate which allows temporary exceptions is still a mandate.
| advisedwang wrote:
| If you apply to go fully remote, that's not temporary.
| hinkley wrote:
| Who approved that application? Your old manager?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| dmitrygr wrote:
| A gift to Meta recruiters, brought to you by Sundar.
| whiplash451 wrote:
| Meh. It is unclear to me that so many people will want to work
| fully remote when their company offers a (real) office to work
| in 3 days a week. The mental benefits of in-person working can
| be significant.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >A gift to Meta recruiters, brought to you by Sundar.
|
| I considered interviewing for Meta recently. Then I realized
| that these are the people who have access to my conversations
| with my girlfriend when I was 15 years old, and a complete
| chronological geotagged history of my exact whereabouts for the
| last 10 years.
|
| No thanks.
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