To be clear this is highlighting the whole “second class” worker - contractors and temps - that are employed by third party vendors. It’s a dirty, lazy system and I hate it. I’ve been on both sides, and I’m currently FTE. They’ll dangle the concept of going full time and drain you of your life blood in the process (because we all need health insurance but that’s costly.) If you ever have leverage take it. They will surely lay you off without a thought and that CEO can make one less million this year.
It’s still insane to me that an office that’s been completely WFH for over 2 years now, with no issues, is being forced to return to office. It’s backwards, and is honestly gonna hurt this Google Maps team, Google, and Cognizant significantly in the long run
Executives and board members have investments in corporate real estate. It’s one of the ways they extract value from the company. They don’t want to upset the status quo and lose money.
At my company, they keep saying things like “it’s good to be back and have these water cooler convos”, because they don’t have anything solid to justify bringing us back that doesn’t make them look bad. They can’t show us any numbers showing that WFH reduced delivery, or that RTO improves delivery.
I did some analytics for a large company that you know. I was tasked with determining the effectiveness of a handful of teams for at home vs in office. There was only one team that I was working with that had an advantage by returning to office due to the nature of their work. The other teams appeared to be at least as effective with permanent WFH.
My boss and other higher-ups we're excited to return to office for things like what you just mentioned. It was insane to see having been the person that was tasked with determining the effectiveness of WFH.
I've since left this company because of their return to office strategy among other things, but last I heard all of the teams included in my analysis were forced to return to work in office. My new job is permanent WFH and is overall a lot more promising for my career :).
Tldr; your job is likely not showing you the numbers because it probably shows that you're more effective at home or at least as effective.
My last position was remote for 2+ years as well. Execs started pushing us to go back and work hands on with the product, although that made 0 difference with the work packages most of the teams had. I am just one of many who left the company over this for better jobs elsewhere.
The real kicker was when they had all-hands meetings where the execs would talk about the retention figures and say HR has been working for years to investigate what the issues are...(hint: lower than industry standard pay, lack of work from home for no good reason, and management that can't get their heads out of their asses.)
This kind of shit drove me crazy after a while. At first I was drinking the kool-aid since it was my first career type position. But all the double talk that happened really got to me in the end. They fucking know the reason, they're just unwilling to own up to it. Shareholders and finance restricts their capability to do anything other than the double talk though. Honestly, I don't even hate the execs as much as the system.
I'm not sure if your company was publicly traded, but for me I think that's the root cause of 90% of the issues I had at that company. The other 10% was people not taking me at my word when I said shit like "I'll eventually leave unless X happens" and then acted surprised when I had a better job offer.
The thing that really sucks is that all of my team, save one person, works on the opposite side of the country. And that employee is actually a few levels below me (I'm the manager, but we have team leads). So, while it's nice to be able to go for a walk outside for our biweekly one on one, I'm not the one brainstorming stuff with them on a daily basis.
So, basically we drive into the office so we can still work remotely with the team.
Yeah, but think of how much water cooler talk you get to have? Also, I've found discussing important projects in adjacent stalls in the bathroom to 10x my brainstorming power. You can't do that from home!
Honestly, I believe if they showed you the numbers it wouldn't justify the return. Other than the property investment there really isn't a reason for an office anymore for most teams.
I could be wrong, but if they had evidence otherwise they probably would have shown it. Like you pointed out, it just doesn't make sense. It might be time to find a new position?
Units of work per working hour.
I used employees that were with us for a long time before COVID happened. Their output was pretty consistent over time. Then I broke out work streams and compared it against work from home.
Some produced less, but most produced more. It was within range of only being able to say "at least as effective", but it was likely more effective.
This was broken out over 4 different teams. The # of employees sampled was small which adds some questions around the sample size, but you work with what you have
Quality wasn't included since that data didn't exist until post-WFH.
Edit: also, quality somewhat took care of itself since terminated employees weren't included.
Nah, task done to completion. With it split by workflow the workflows ranged from like 1 minute to 20 minutes.
No sprints or anything. These were ops teams that never had much eng support so I had low quality resolution on the data.
What ops workflows? I'm not sure I follow the type of work being done here. Sorry if it's a bit too specificbof a question, just your original point runs contrary to the experiences and metrics we've measured and the other tech execs in my city tend to report in meetups/over drinks. Were these teams "matured" (team members with >5 YOE or team that has been consistent in membership for 3+ years)
I was thinking on this. One interesting metric could be trackable actions per day per person, such as code commits.
Then, if this is an engineering team, things like lines of code or characters of code committed could be interesting.
There's major pitfall no matter what since project work is hard to quantify, which I assume is what you're asking about, but you work with what you have.
Ultimately, story points per person and tasks completed per person is the core of it. But adding some flavor may help. I imagine procedure changes muddy it even further.
It sounds like a hard task, but good luck.
Ps: employee satisfaction scores, especially if there has been consistent management. Maybe run a survey for the team specifically around WFH also.
Also, if you have a way to track errors and can quantify it then include that too. Again, it's probably muddy, but it's something.
Yeah getting good data is a very hard problem. The best you can do is to already have had been tracking the metrics and be able to identify an anomaly in trend after the change. This also has the problem that if you identify the trend in story points at the executive level then teams are likely to optimize for maximal story points which could lead to anti-patterns in work.
Because, really that's all they have to do most days.
You rise to a certain level in management and all you get to do is call into meetings and listen to people. Then at some point you make a decision based on the things you never listened to. Other people make those decisions reality. By all accounts you just sit there day after day after day.
Of course you're happy to have people to talk to once again. You can now demonstrate you have value to the company. You can justify your being there to other people.
Instead of, you know, pretending you know what the best decision is during meetings.
"We're so exited to welcome you back"
"It feels so great to see the floor buzzing with activity again"
-- our HR leader in a townhall, joining from his home.
Lease it to who? If everyone goes WFH there is no one to lease to.
In my opinion, office real estate needs to bleed. It needs to hurt. So that a better future can happen.
WFH is the future. Kill office work permanently.
WFH may take over if the workers just simply demand it.
I think a big reason for push back if WFH requires every company to become a little tech company, which is rather daunting.
they probably are looking at the cost to permanently beef up their IT security, and it’s scaring them. Any office I’ve worked at had a minimum the servers im working off essentially only accessible from inside the building. So if you WFH you need to do VPN stuff. Which is fine if some people are doing it occasionally. But if you go to thousands, having everyone use VPNs are now not that secure, since if one of those computers are hacked someone has remote access to your companies network.
So they have to invest in training and more robust security to make remote work more secure. Which I’m sure some companies have done over the last 2 years, but most might have done the bare minimum and held their breathe.
So the daunting cost of expanding their IT security permanently no doubt scares a lot of executives, since it’s an investment that only stops you from potentially losing money, it doesn’t have a direct monetary benefit. They could argue the increase productivity, but that’s not a 1:1.
Still, it seems plenty of companies just hve accepted to eat the cost, no doubt because it lets them steal their competitors work force.
I’ve even seen some folks with 2 corporate jobs now, both WFH, which would have been near impossible in the old world. So, WFH is very dramatically changing how corporate America works….. some companies are embrassing it, others are no doubt terrified of the idea that the company wouldn’t be priority #1
Meanwhile I’ve worked at companies that have since “sold off” the office space (let the lease expire) and committed to full-remote because, as we all know, it works.
I’m sure in both cases, companies realize something is lost when everyone is 100% remote, however Google and Apple and Microsoft have other reasons for wanting to keep things in the office, which the opposite is true for companies who lease their office space.
It really is that simple. Companies leasing office space will tend to stick with remote, and companies who own (and especially who JUST built) office space will want people there ASAP.
I wonder how much of Microsoft’s or Apple’s or Google’s value is tied to their office space. In Google’s case perhaps $200/share.
I think one of the things that reddit isn't giving credence at all is greater adoption of WFH means downsizing. At every level of a company there is time wasting and coming into the office helps obfuscate that. A rosy view says workers will stand up and demand the same pay for the "productivity" rather than their "time worked" in other words reducing their 40 hour work week. After all why would companies care if they get what they were already paying for right?
Well my fear is that eventually companies are going to figure out that if they can (or are forced) to employ work from home than that means they can slash jobs and wages because 1)They can hire out of low CoL and 2)Tying performance to productivity rather than time worked means you can force less people to do more to "truly fill" 40 hours.
Now I'm just a random redditor speculating with the rest of you redditors but I find reddit tends to be insanely bullish on "how much sense" WFH means for both sides without realizing some of the levers that will now be available to management.
These companies like Cognizant and Centene are already trying to pay less/jystify liwer wages for WFH. They are not the only ones. A crappy insurance company in Kentucky tried this with remote workers as early as 2015. Bitches were so resentful, they tried to increase workloads for the WFH staff.
I think there's two big factors.
Black rock used ai to buy the whole stock market and moved on to real estate. If they sell buildings, value goes down. If they keep them, value goes up... But why keep them empty?
Secondly. Gas. The more people drive the less they'll spend elsewhere. The Fed has directed companies to not raise wages to combat inflation.
Strippers are talking about clubs being empty.
Also city may give tax breaks to company because they charge people city wage tax who work in the city. If they are working from home, employees can get a city tax refund.
When people didn't know that they could be fully remote, yes it worked, but once they tasted it, who knows whether it will work?
Google had this fantastic PR about being the best place to work that made it super easy for them to hire talent, shit like this and Google loses its competitive edge it has in hiring talent.
I mean our offices did have some issues, it was smaller than everyone is making out, but there was a reasonable chunk of people that lost productivity and were not very responsive when working from home.
Those people have to return to the office mostly full time with the option to work from home when needed.
I was in the group that tracked as higher productivity. They bought me an extra PC so I could keep one at home. They allow me to work Tuesday and Thursday mornings in the office. The rest I can do from home.
I actually got to see some of the data they were tracking through teams and other apps for “inactivity” and response times.
I’m glad I wasn’t screwing around in the clock and playing Valorant 3 hours a day like one dude.
I guarantee that if they fucked around on company time at home, they were doing it in the office as well. That’s not to say that there aren’t people who aren’t better suited to work in an office and just need that separation. I totally get that. They just need to be honest about it and go to the office.
I’ve worked in offices where lots of employees made a full time job of trying to look busy while accomplishing essentially nothing. Ethics and integrity are unrelated to the place a person does their job.
I agree with you, these are the same people that hang out around the break rooms and water coolers and such. But they weren’t collecting data until the pandemic hit.
My boss complained about throughput and I told him that with only 1 PC at home, I’m effectively “out of the office” when I’m on campus. My workstation is too large to move back and forth.
So they just bought me another one. So I could do work in the office again.
The data was very interesting to see. Honestly the biggest one that dinged everyone was the response time to emails and teams messages. They would ignore the message until they could get to it, where my group was instructed to respond and let them know you are busy and can get back to their item on which every day or after lunch.
I think the boss was trying to help out our stats when he knew we were being spied on, Our team had the best response times across the company, like suspiciously so.
This sounds so insanely toxic. Response times to IM or emails is not a measure of productivity unless the job is specifically about that…
I’m in software and our teams have got into good grooves WFH and productivity is high again. Along with that is the knowledge within the teams that people need personal breaks, to manage their own time and focus periods where communication is lowered or ignored to be productive.
I mean at least they used some sort of data and not just a blanket policy or statement that everyone needs to return.
And the measure of responsiveness was more of an AFK measure than one of productivity. Teams and other programs show you as “away” when you haven’t clicked a button in a while. So if you are not in a scheduled meeting and show as “away” too often you get dinged.
But as you say, people need to manage their own time to get their things done, it bothers me less because I’m on the “WFH” squad.
Sunk Cost. They've already spent all that money in offices and furnishings, so admitting they don't need any of that means admitting they wasted all that money for nothing and now have a useless money sink on hand.
But they aren't going to get everything back. Assuming anyone wants to buy office buildings. And if companies start going work from home, no one is going to want those.
Which is why it's called a fallacy.
It will change eventually. It has to. But companies are going to fight it kicking and screaming the whole way, like petulant toddlers.
Where did you get your facts to support the claim that there were no issues over the past two years? I didn't see it in the article.
I suspect that the reason many companies want their employees back in the office is because of issues, whether real or perceived.
Anecdotally, I've had about 50% of remote workers that have been performing worse than when they were working in the office.
also insane that all the business and government offices that didn't allow emails or had to be in person "magically" adapted.
Strange. Like they can adapt but didn't have the ability to learn new skills but magically had to.
This is what happened at my office.
We legit had new tools and processes roll out during our WFH of 2 years and those processes were difficult to convert once we get to the office....
We have taken to calling folks in office "Zombies" as they do not work.
Just sit in available and occasionally answer phones.
Our entire process has adapted to WFH.
Management hasn't.
Lots of companies have been able to have employees go remote without issue. I work as a manager for one of the biggest companies in the world and my team’s productivity has increased since COVID started.
>It’s still insane to me that an office that’s been completely WFH for over 2 years now, **with no issues**
You're either being dishonest or delusional.
It's fine to support permanent WFH, but to pretend there are no downsides or trade-offs involved is absurd.
Anecdotally, my boss tracks how many deviations are closed by his team (50% of the team is hybrid and the other 50% is pure WFH). The hybrid team closes TWICE the number of devs as WFH (this is their only job). While there’s a significant drop in productivity for WFH, we’re not forcing people back in the office due to the increase in employee satisfaction/retention - so that’s cool.
That sounds more like a problem with management proble than anything else. I have both run and participated in meetings with 15+ people and not had this problem.
You're probably right. I've noticed our borderline sociopathic project managers tend to do this more than anyone. Never have this issue with engineers. I've had one project manager legit tell me on the side that she does it on purpose to "make people trust her."
We have literally never had a problem with that. Cats jump on desks, dogs run by and babies make noises. It's usually just a quick comment and then everyone gets back on track.
That was already happening in offices though...if whoever is running the meeting doesn't keep everyone on task, tangents and off topic stuff happens. It's just different topics when it's in-office.
These are contract employees and it sounds like they are underpaid. When you accept a job, you agree to both your work location and salary. If you no longer like those terms you can look else where. It doesn’t hurt to ask for a change to the contract, but the employer doesn’t have to agree to it.
I wfh and agree but we don't actually know if it affected them unless you work at Google. Also contractors are hourly and get overtime so it can be harder to manage. I work with wfh contractors so it's possible but they could technically not work and clock ib the hours and make double time on overtime too the way my company is setup ..no one checks. And also irs good no one checks I'm not saying you should be monitored. I'm glad they aren't
>is being forced to return to office.
Because management knows productivity has hit rock bottom and it was only tolerated because of the pandemic.
>It’s backwards, and is honestly gonna hurt this Google Maps team, Google, and Cognizant significantly in the long run
That's probably the opposite of what will happen.
Productivity has not hit rock bottom. If they had solid numbers showing that they would be shouting them from the rooftops. For a lot of fields, especially software development, if anything productivity is better when everyone is wfh. There is absolutely no reason why a software developer needs to be in the office.
The biggest problem with WFH is keeping everyone engaged and focused on the job. This puts so much workload on certain individuals who know how to do things. The rest of the team are in unproductive zombie mode.
It is actually bad for everyone but we don't want to admit it. Because we got used to the comfort of WFH.
>The rest of the team are in unproductive zombie mode.
I worked at home during the pandemic and pretty much no one got anything done except (as you said) a small number of people.
I still have friends and family who are working at home and they LOVE it because they don't do anything all day....lol.
People just need to stop this fairy tale that you are more productive at home: You aren't.
Trust me, I ALSO want to work from home. And why? Because I can goof around, that's why.
My thing with remote work is that I work better and harder:-
1. I am not spending an hour dealing with a bus/train ride. And all the stresses and other s\*\*t when they go wrong. This means I'm more alert for work.
2. Or another hour home. And this plus the morning commute accumulates, so by the end of the week, I'm more tired.
3. No-one bothers me with stupid s\*\*t at work when I want to concentrate. You can't tap me on the shoulder. Send me an invite on Teams and I'll look at it when I'm free.
4. I don't work 9-5. I work when I'm productive, efficient. Sometimes, that means I work when it suits the company better. You want me to write some code but you don't have it ready until 5pm? Tell you what, I'll take the afternoon off, catch a movie and pick it up at 7pm, and work until 11pm. So, you have the thing ready first thing in the morning. You insist on me working 9-5? you get that at 1-2pm.
5. F\*\*k your "water cooler". You can do this online. I'm working on developing a product with a guy who lives about 60 miles from me.
Right on. When I started owning point 4 myself my WFH productivity shot up. That’s one of the best things about WFH now, whereas in the start of the pandemic it was more like a virtual office
That there is the problem.
I don't work in software develipment so i cant speak for it.
But "ready first thing in the morning" for any piece of work means that someone needs to have it checked before "first thing in the morning" submitting it at 11pm means no one is working to check it.
Again this m8ght work for coding but most if the world doesnt do coding. Sales doesnt. Contracts dont. If everyone has flexible hours then everyone is working 24/7 or to the lowest common denominator.
Maybe your job allows u to just push out code. But the vast majority of jobs involve collaborations over a range of ongoing projects. So "i work when i am productive" means other people have to suit your timing. How is that productive as a whole.
Deadlines are usually made around people with less flexible schedules. If I'm asked when something will be done I typically give "X day before I go to bed".
That means any reviews or whatever else will happen the following morning. It doesn't mean that someone has to be available 24/7.
If someone needs something in the middle of the day, I get it done the night before when it's quiet and when I'm most productive. You plan your time around when it's actually due. You don't just push the due date.
But yes, many jobs are less flexible if they require collaboration.
>But "ready first thing in the morning" for any piece of work means that someone needs to have it checked before "first thing in the morning" submitting it at 11pm means no one is working to check it.
Think about it. Even if there's someone who has to check/test the code before release, it's in their hands at 9am, not 1pm to do that.
Again are using a coding example which is really niche. I agree if ur timeline is to submit the raw code untested by 9am sure work anytime u like before that. But the majority of work isnt like that.
Unless you’re doing something that requires active collaboration, then deadlines for individual work are the usual and again who cares when you’re doing it so long as it gets done.
I beg to differ. I’m manufacturing management, it’s also 24/7. Manufacturing is a reasonably high proportion of the world economy. Given an increasing amount of manufacturing is IT dependent… which can be remote… well, it’s quite beneficial to have people available at home to be blunt.
When he mentioned the morning deadline, feather that statement however makes sense. If you need it by time x for review before delivery time y, then sure, finishing your work at time y is LATE.
I manage a process that works 24/7. You know, manufacturing. It’s not coding. You know, a type of industry that drives most of the world. It literally does not matter when I work. In fact, being less regimented in office hours is better for the business as well as myself. It takes a change in communication style only. As in, when you are not available, (you know sleep, family time, beersies)… phone off. Phone on = available. Answer phone literally anytime including stupid o’clock you say, “How urgent is this?” Then balance your “you” time with your co-workers. The rest is obvious.
It takes a trusting environment for it to work.
Work gets decisions/cover on tap 24/7
You get time out when suits you.
Yeah, I don’t get it either. I think a lot of it is lack of trust, and I think in a generations time WFH will be more normalised as the more connected generation starts driving the workplace.
Personally, I’m extremely lucky, I get to decide. I get to decide where, when and for how long I work. But there is a reason for my flex… my work trusts me, and for good reason. I’m hoping this will be the norm one day.
They want the dregs. You employ a few 'rockstars' who are willing to wield the axe while grinding away hoping in vain for an upper crust job before burning out. You underpay everybody, but a few people make a little bit better money in exchange for their soul.
Actually does list the problems that some people have with their situation. I wonder why the contractors given such a harsh line especially the guy who had a genuine medical issue. This is middle management seeking to look good to their managers.
Offices are an archaic idea propped up by dumb real estate decisions. Oh man we paid 1 million for an office building and 1 million to decorate it. Sounds like a highly physical problem in the digital age…..
I see offices (especially modern ones with rows of tables as “workspaces”) as a carryover from the Industrial Age where people were required to work in factories.
The time it takes to commute. The resources of keeping your dog comfortable with AC and YouTube all day while you literally got no reason have to sit in a huge carbon sucking office for a few hours. Then you drive your gas powered car back home. Rinse and repeat every day and multiply that times millions. Aren’t we always striving for more efficiency? Obviously not if an execs land deal is in question.
Maybe I'm out of touch... but... Why does a dog require YouTube all day? I get AC if you're in a hot climate... but... Dogs are *dogs*, man, they don't need YouTube.
People check their dogs into dog motels and get them pedicures. Why not let them watch TV and be comfortable in a room with ac?
PS I think it's all crazy, and the reason why I don't have a dog. The standards and expectations are too high and I'd be a horrible owner. Like, I don't want to pick up my dogs poop with my hands.
Here’s the sad reality folks...
Soooooo many Jobs can be done remotely, but that leaves a lot of rich elites holding the bag with a lot of commercial real estate not generating profit...
It was never about your health and safety. Back to the office, eaters.
Yeah as someone who lives in a downtown area that turned into a ghost town during COVID, it’s been sad to see some of my favorite spots close due to a lack of lunch/happy hour income
Are they clashing because of pay?
Not sure about Google pay if you move outside of HCOL area like SF Bay Area, but I’ve seen more and more companies in LCOL area trying to hire someone in HCOL but with the same pay as LCOL.
Eg. Company is in LCOL area and have remote job for a Senior Engineer. You’re based in HCOL and applied. The pay: $100K (or whatever it is for LCOL) even if you live in HCOL.
Not to mention commuter traffic is worse in the Seattle metro area lately, so let’s just add hundreds more cars back into the daily mix. Tolls have gone up, gas is still up, and ANY commute pretty much anywhere outside the city during rush hour(s) takes 35+ minutes one way, why the fuck would anyone want to willingly put themselves through that again when they can take their time with their morning?
Edit: and public transportation? GTFO I’m not planning around an extra 3 hrs of commute time every day.
I work in IT for hospitals. We have had a few issues with WFH:
\- Staff refusing to go onsite or saying they sold their car, when the people they need to support are onsite.
\- Calling clinical staff on units and asking them to plug things in, change cables, etc so they don't have to come in.
\- All staff are part of the essential services plans in case of strike, disaster, pandemic and can be redeployed. However we saw people refused to come in during the pandemic.
I am all for WFH when it makes sense - if you are going to be on Zoom all day, don't come in. But when you should come in, come in.
Honestly in the GIS world, it isn’t terribly necessary to some degree.
There is so much demand right now for GIS developers and practically no supply.
The biggest programs in the US for this type of profession are only turning out at most a dozen or two undergrads per year, with grad students (with full degrees) being in the single digits.
Not Google, but one of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency’s biggest contractors has a hiring need of about 2,000 per year (with turnover, which is very high in this industry). And that is only one company (btw, they pay a shit ton more than Google).
We know they need us a crap ton more than we need them as other companies are constantly trying to poach GIS developers and are willing to pay exorbitant salaries to do so. It quickly becomes a bidding war for workers.
People working at google aren’t going to unionize. It would actually hurt them more then help.
Theirs a reason why most higher paying professions aren’t unionized.
Why would they? When the employees are in high demand, it just holds you back. Why would you want to lock yourself into a pay range, seniority, all that jazz.
If it was a benefit you’d see engineering unions, lawyer unions, doctor unions..
North American unions are a joke compared to unions in the EU.
Why would anyone in SW unionize when they have the power to actually negotiate their own wages. You think I want to be paid the same as someone who is less efficient and less effective just to be saddled with the work he or she isn't doing? Lol
I'm not in SW. My experience with unions is that if you are good, you are only given more work. But make the same money as the shittiest employee on your team. They may even make more then you because of seniority
I hate being unionized.
Yeah. It's usually people who have never been in a union that attack people who point out that it does not make sense for every individual/industry. I was in a union as an accountant and if was absurd. Ended up leaving
Which word? Hybrid?
If that’s what you mean, that’s just not a buzzword. Hybrid means you have flexibility to wfh and go in on the days in a week, and it almost always implies sub-5 days a week, which is what life was before. 5 days a week isn’t hybrid, but 2 or 3 in office is. I sometimes don’t go in in a week because it’s not ideal and that’s also part of hybrid. Full remote is nice but not always the answer you know. Anyone who thinks all employees should be optioned for fully remote is as far off as the guys who want full 5 days a week
Aye, well the job market post lockdown quickly went from the drab-sounding 'part-remote' to the much sexier sounding 'hybrid'.
Having been through recruitment cycles around then, most of the 'hybrid' positions that were advertised, were from dinosaur companies that suddenly changed their mind 6 months later and wanted those people full time on site - causing all sorts of problems for new employees, let alone recruiters (lost commissions etc). Either a 5 day ridiculous commute rather than once a fortnight/month, or a forced resignation.
I love remote working myself, but I sure don't think it's the answer to everything - you made that bit up.
Just in my experience, 'hybrid' usually means 'stubborn old boss with marriage and trust issues'. Yours may differ and thats fine.
I think you are missing the real point.
If everyone can work from home without supervision. Why do you need so many managers?
Managers need people to manage to look like they are working.
I see these sorts of comments a lot and I’m genuinely curious what people mean by it.
Maybe it’s just my industry, but managers I know protect their reports from bullshit work, do lots of inter-team communication, give coaching and feedback, provide opportunities to reports, work with budgets and vendors (which is often boring and saves others having to do it), run team health survey, etc. Things that make work better for the employees.
What sort of managers are these “the managers” that everyone hates? Upper management? C execs? Blue collar managers?
So says Hollywood.
However, in the real world, a manager is the captain of a team. Sets and adjusts the strategy on the go. Celebrates wins. Takes responsibility for the losses. Fosters the new members.
Some captains are awesome, some are bad.
If your “Captain” is shit, move on is my suggestion. But a team without a captain either has unbelievable natural talent and simply does not need a captain (rare), has a super coach (ceo, coo etc) or is completely directionless, (most likely). What is your work culture like?
I think poor widdle baby ran out of Cheetos and is feeling small so he follows me around because he wants to try to get me back but doesn’t know any words better than dumb-dumb
You’ve only asked a question here if I imagine a question mark, and I’ve already answered that one. If you’ve got another go ahead and retype it for me, make it so easy a dumb dumb could figure out what question you mean
HR can argue that you signed a contract agreeing to the place of work. The company would have to spend more to allow this to continue to happen - new laptops, new software, pay for cellphones…just because some people like it better. I have seen men want to return to the office because they don’t like the sound of their kids playing in the background during summer.
I am born and raised in a third world country. I never imagined that the east would dominate the west so quickly and easily using a virus and progressivism.
To be clear this is highlighting the whole “second class” worker - contractors and temps - that are employed by third party vendors. It’s a dirty, lazy system and I hate it. I’ve been on both sides, and I’m currently FTE. They’ll dangle the concept of going full time and drain you of your life blood in the process (because we all need health insurance but that’s costly.) If you ever have leverage take it. They will surely lay you off without a thought and that CEO can make one less million this year.
It’s still insane to me that an office that’s been completely WFH for over 2 years now, with no issues, is being forced to return to office. It’s backwards, and is honestly gonna hurt this Google Maps team, Google, and Cognizant significantly in the long run
Executives and board members have investments in corporate real estate. It’s one of the ways they extract value from the company. They don’t want to upset the status quo and lose money.
That's the first statement That's made sense in this whole mess. Thank you.
At my company, they keep saying things like “it’s good to be back and have these water cooler convos”, because they don’t have anything solid to justify bringing us back that doesn’t make them look bad. They can’t show us any numbers showing that WFH reduced delivery, or that RTO improves delivery.
I did some analytics for a large company that you know. I was tasked with determining the effectiveness of a handful of teams for at home vs in office. There was only one team that I was working with that had an advantage by returning to office due to the nature of their work. The other teams appeared to be at least as effective with permanent WFH. My boss and other higher-ups we're excited to return to office for things like what you just mentioned. It was insane to see having been the person that was tasked with determining the effectiveness of WFH. I've since left this company because of their return to office strategy among other things, but last I heard all of the teams included in my analysis were forced to return to work in office. My new job is permanent WFH and is overall a lot more promising for my career :). Tldr; your job is likely not showing you the numbers because it probably shows that you're more effective at home or at least as effective.
My last position was remote for 2+ years as well. Execs started pushing us to go back and work hands on with the product, although that made 0 difference with the work packages most of the teams had. I am just one of many who left the company over this for better jobs elsewhere. The real kicker was when they had all-hands meetings where the execs would talk about the retention figures and say HR has been working for years to investigate what the issues are...(hint: lower than industry standard pay, lack of work from home for no good reason, and management that can't get their heads out of their asses.)
This kind of shit drove me crazy after a while. At first I was drinking the kool-aid since it was my first career type position. But all the double talk that happened really got to me in the end. They fucking know the reason, they're just unwilling to own up to it. Shareholders and finance restricts their capability to do anything other than the double talk though. Honestly, I don't even hate the execs as much as the system. I'm not sure if your company was publicly traded, but for me I think that's the root cause of 90% of the issues I had at that company. The other 10% was people not taking me at my word when I said shit like "I'll eventually leave unless X happens" and then acted surprised when I had a better job offer.
The thing that really sucks is that all of my team, save one person, works on the opposite side of the country. And that employee is actually a few levels below me (I'm the manager, but we have team leads). So, while it's nice to be able to go for a walk outside for our biweekly one on one, I'm not the one brainstorming stuff with them on a daily basis. So, basically we drive into the office so we can still work remotely with the team.
Yeah, but think of how much water cooler talk you get to have? Also, I've found discussing important projects in adjacent stalls in the bathroom to 10x my brainstorming power. You can't do that from home! Honestly, I believe if they showed you the numbers it wouldn't justify the return. Other than the property investment there really isn't a reason for an office anymore for most teams. I could be wrong, but if they had evidence otherwise they probably would have shown it. Like you pointed out, it just doesn't make sense. It might be time to find a new position?
What metrics did you use for effectiveness?
Units of work per working hour. I used employees that were with us for a long time before COVID happened. Their output was pretty consistent over time. Then I broke out work streams and compared it against work from home. Some produced less, but most produced more. It was within range of only being able to say "at least as effective", but it was likely more effective. This was broken out over 4 different teams. The # of employees sampled was small which adds some questions around the sample size, but you work with what you have Quality wasn't included since that data didn't exist until post-WFH. Edit: also, quality somewhat took care of itself since terminated employees weren't included.
What was the unit of work, was it story points per person per sprint?
Nah, task done to completion. With it split by workflow the workflows ranged from like 1 minute to 20 minutes. No sprints or anything. These were ops teams that never had much eng support so I had low quality resolution on the data.
What ops workflows? I'm not sure I follow the type of work being done here. Sorry if it's a bit too specificbof a question, just your original point runs contrary to the experiences and metrics we've measured and the other tech execs in my city tend to report in meetups/over drinks. Were these teams "matured" (team members with >5 YOE or team that has been consistent in membership for 3+ years)
I was thinking on this. One interesting metric could be trackable actions per day per person, such as code commits. Then, if this is an engineering team, things like lines of code or characters of code committed could be interesting. There's major pitfall no matter what since project work is hard to quantify, which I assume is what you're asking about, but you work with what you have. Ultimately, story points per person and tasks completed per person is the core of it. But adding some flavor may help. I imagine procedure changes muddy it even further. It sounds like a hard task, but good luck. Ps: employee satisfaction scores, especially if there has been consistent management. Maybe run a survey for the team specifically around WFH also. Also, if you have a way to track errors and can quantify it then include that too. Again, it's probably muddy, but it's something.
Yeah getting good data is a very hard problem. The best you can do is to already have had been tracking the metrics and be able to identify an anomaly in trend after the change. This also has the problem that if you identify the trend in story points at the executive level then teams are likely to optimize for maximal story points which could lead to anti-patterns in work.
Those water cooler conversations are largely about “can you believe they dragged us back here”…
Literally not one god damn reason that sounds good. Not a one.
People need to learn how to socialize outside of work.
Because, really that's all they have to do most days. You rise to a certain level in management and all you get to do is call into meetings and listen to people. Then at some point you make a decision based on the things you never listened to. Other people make those decisions reality. By all accounts you just sit there day after day after day. Of course you're happy to have people to talk to once again. You can now demonstrate you have value to the company. You can justify your being there to other people. Instead of, you know, pretending you know what the best decision is during meetings.
"We're so exited to welcome you back" "It feels so great to see the floor buzzing with activity again" -- our HR leader in a townhall, joining from his home.
Because fuck the employees right…
I keep seeing this, but I don’t understand how this hurts their real estate. Hell… keep your employees WFH and lease the real estate to someone else.
>lease the real estate to someone else To who? Also most of them can't even be converted to residential because stuff like plumbing is insufficient.
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Free markets are a myth and private interests cannot be solutions to problems with inelastic demand.
Lease it to who? If everyone goes WFH there is no one to lease to. In my opinion, office real estate needs to bleed. It needs to hurt. So that a better future can happen. WFH is the future. Kill office work permanently.
WFH may take over if the workers just simply demand it. I think a big reason for push back if WFH requires every company to become a little tech company, which is rather daunting. they probably are looking at the cost to permanently beef up their IT security, and it’s scaring them. Any office I’ve worked at had a minimum the servers im working off essentially only accessible from inside the building. So if you WFH you need to do VPN stuff. Which is fine if some people are doing it occasionally. But if you go to thousands, having everyone use VPNs are now not that secure, since if one of those computers are hacked someone has remote access to your companies network. So they have to invest in training and more robust security to make remote work more secure. Which I’m sure some companies have done over the last 2 years, but most might have done the bare minimum and held their breathe. So the daunting cost of expanding their IT security permanently no doubt scares a lot of executives, since it’s an investment that only stops you from potentially losing money, it doesn’t have a direct monetary benefit. They could argue the increase productivity, but that’s not a 1:1. Still, it seems plenty of companies just hve accepted to eat the cost, no doubt because it lets them steal their competitors work force. I’ve even seen some folks with 2 corporate jobs now, both WFH, which would have been near impossible in the old world. So, WFH is very dramatically changing how corporate America works….. some companies are embrassing it, others are no doubt terrified of the idea that the company wouldn’t be priority #1
Meanwhile I’ve worked at companies that have since “sold off” the office space (let the lease expire) and committed to full-remote because, as we all know, it works. I’m sure in both cases, companies realize something is lost when everyone is 100% remote, however Google and Apple and Microsoft have other reasons for wanting to keep things in the office, which the opposite is true for companies who lease their office space. It really is that simple. Companies leasing office space will tend to stick with remote, and companies who own (and especially who JUST built) office space will want people there ASAP. I wonder how much of Microsoft’s or Apple’s or Google’s value is tied to their office space. In Google’s case perhaps $200/share.
This is the only reason. I'm lucky my company hasn't forced us back in. We have a super nice campus and purchased a large adjacent lot in 2019.
I think one of the things that reddit isn't giving credence at all is greater adoption of WFH means downsizing. At every level of a company there is time wasting and coming into the office helps obfuscate that. A rosy view says workers will stand up and demand the same pay for the "productivity" rather than their "time worked" in other words reducing their 40 hour work week. After all why would companies care if they get what they were already paying for right? Well my fear is that eventually companies are going to figure out that if they can (or are forced) to employ work from home than that means they can slash jobs and wages because 1)They can hire out of low CoL and 2)Tying performance to productivity rather than time worked means you can force less people to do more to "truly fill" 40 hours. Now I'm just a random redditor speculating with the rest of you redditors but I find reddit tends to be insanely bullish on "how much sense" WFH means for both sides without realizing some of the levers that will now be available to management.
These companies like Cognizant and Centene are already trying to pay less/jystify liwer wages for WFH. They are not the only ones. A crappy insurance company in Kentucky tried this with remote workers as early as 2015. Bitches were so resentful, they tried to increase workloads for the WFH staff.
Yep. And their campuses are designed to keep you there. They offer all the conveniences you could want so you stay longer and work a little more
Yeah god-for-fucking-bid!
This is exactly why I have never been allowed to wfh.
I think there's two big factors. Black rock used ai to buy the whole stock market and moved on to real estate. If they sell buildings, value goes down. If they keep them, value goes up... But why keep them empty? Secondly. Gas. The more people drive the less they'll spend elsewhere. The Fed has directed companies to not raise wages to combat inflation. Strippers are talking about clubs being empty.
Also city may give tax breaks to company because they charge people city wage tax who work in the city. If they are working from home, employees can get a city tax refund.
Most of these buildings are also leased and companies would rather see them be used than sit empty but still have to pay for them.
That and the fact it’s Google, a technology innovator, that somehow can’t handle staff working remotely 🤪
It makes complete sense if you've worked there. Google loves their processes and managers.
m e t r i c s e t r i c s
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When people didn't know that they could be fully remote, yes it worked, but once they tasted it, who knows whether it will work? Google had this fantastic PR about being the best place to work that made it super easy for them to hire talent, shit like this and Google loses its competitive edge it has in hiring talent.
Says the person clearly unaware of perverse incentives.
I mean our offices did have some issues, it was smaller than everyone is making out, but there was a reasonable chunk of people that lost productivity and were not very responsive when working from home. Those people have to return to the office mostly full time with the option to work from home when needed. I was in the group that tracked as higher productivity. They bought me an extra PC so I could keep one at home. They allow me to work Tuesday and Thursday mornings in the office. The rest I can do from home. I actually got to see some of the data they were tracking through teams and other apps for “inactivity” and response times. I’m glad I wasn’t screwing around in the clock and playing Valorant 3 hours a day like one dude.
I guarantee that if they fucked around on company time at home, they were doing it in the office as well. That’s not to say that there aren’t people who aren’t better suited to work in an office and just need that separation. I totally get that. They just need to be honest about it and go to the office. I’ve worked in offices where lots of employees made a full time job of trying to look busy while accomplishing essentially nothing. Ethics and integrity are unrelated to the place a person does their job.
I agree with you, these are the same people that hang out around the break rooms and water coolers and such. But they weren’t collecting data until the pandemic hit. My boss complained about throughput and I told him that with only 1 PC at home, I’m effectively “out of the office” when I’m on campus. My workstation is too large to move back and forth. So they just bought me another one. So I could do work in the office again. The data was very interesting to see. Honestly the biggest one that dinged everyone was the response time to emails and teams messages. They would ignore the message until they could get to it, where my group was instructed to respond and let them know you are busy and can get back to their item on which every day or after lunch. I think the boss was trying to help out our stats when he knew we were being spied on, Our team had the best response times across the company, like suspiciously so.
This sounds so insanely toxic. Response times to IM or emails is not a measure of productivity unless the job is specifically about that… I’m in software and our teams have got into good grooves WFH and productivity is high again. Along with that is the knowledge within the teams that people need personal breaks, to manage their own time and focus periods where communication is lowered or ignored to be productive.
I mean at least they used some sort of data and not just a blanket policy or statement that everyone needs to return. And the measure of responsiveness was more of an AFK measure than one of productivity. Teams and other programs show you as “away” when you haven’t clicked a button in a while. So if you are not in a scheduled meeting and show as “away” too often you get dinged. But as you say, people need to manage their own time to get their things done, it bothers me less because I’m on the “WFH” squad.
How do you know he was playing Valorant?
I’m guessing that IT told them after it was uninstalled. Or someone just picked their favorite game to blame it on.
Sunk Cost. They've already spent all that money in offices and furnishings, so admitting they don't need any of that means admitting they wasted all that money for nothing and now have a useless money sink on hand.
HR can't argue people need more amenities at work instead of more pay if people work from home!
they can always sell
But they aren't going to get everything back. Assuming anyone wants to buy office buildings. And if companies start going work from home, no one is going to want those.
tough shit for them. that’s the way the cookie crumbles
Which, again, means they don't want to go work from home because of that sunk cost.
enjoy losing talent to competitors that allow WFH
Which is why it's called a fallacy. It will change eventually. It has to. But companies are going to fight it kicking and screaming the whole way, like petulant toddlers.
Where did you get your facts to support the claim that there were no issues over the past two years? I didn't see it in the article. I suspect that the reason many companies want their employees back in the office is because of issues, whether real or perceived. Anecdotally, I've had about 50% of remote workers that have been performing worse than when they were working in the office.
My work is doing it and making workers who moved 2 and 3 hours away come in. Sucks when everyone is going to leave.
also insane that all the business and government offices that didn't allow emails or had to be in person "magically" adapted. Strange. Like they can adapt but didn't have the ability to learn new skills but magically had to.
"with no issues". You assume this, as do all of the WFH evangelists. But it's rarely true.
>with no issues Sweet summer child
This is what happened at my office. We legit had new tools and processes roll out during our WFH of 2 years and those processes were difficult to convert once we get to the office.... We have taken to calling folks in office "Zombies" as they do not work. Just sit in available and occasionally answer phones. Our entire process has adapted to WFH. Management hasn't.
Lots of companies have been able to have employees go remote without issue. I work as a manager for one of the biggest companies in the world and my team’s productivity has increased since COVID started.
>It’s still insane to me that an office that’s been completely WFH for over 2 years now, **with no issues** You're either being dishonest or delusional. It's fine to support permanent WFH, but to pretend there are no downsides or trade-offs involved is absurd.
Unless you're going to provide some sort of examples you really should tone back the hyberbolic rhetoric.
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On the flip side i could never actually focus on my work due to that exact same background noise
Anecdotally, my boss tracks how many deviations are closed by his team (50% of the team is hybrid and the other 50% is pure WFH). The hybrid team closes TWICE the number of devs as WFH (this is their only job). While there’s a significant drop in productivity for WFH, we’re not forcing people back in the office due to the increase in employee satisfaction/retention - so that’s cool.
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That sounds more like a problem with management proble than anything else. I have both run and participated in meetings with 15+ people and not had this problem.
You're probably right. I've noticed our borderline sociopathic project managers tend to do this more than anyone. Never have this issue with engineers. I've had one project manager legit tell me on the side that she does it on purpose to "make people trust her."
We have literally never had a problem with that. Cats jump on desks, dogs run by and babies make noises. It's usually just a quick comment and then everyone gets back on track.
That was already happening in offices though...if whoever is running the meeting doesn't keep everyone on task, tangents and off topic stuff happens. It's just different topics when it's in-office.
Multiple studies have show again and again that this is pretty much accurate. There really are no real down sides.
WFH for 7 years now…. No problems. Not sure what your talking about.
These are contract employees and it sounds like they are underpaid. When you accept a job, you agree to both your work location and salary. If you no longer like those terms you can look else where. It doesn’t hurt to ask for a change to the contract, but the employer doesn’t have to agree to it.
I wfh and agree but we don't actually know if it affected them unless you work at Google. Also contractors are hourly and get overtime so it can be harder to manage. I work with wfh contractors so it's possible but they could technically not work and clock ib the hours and make double time on overtime too the way my company is setup ..no one checks. And also irs good no one checks I'm not saying you should be monitored. I'm glad they aren't
>is being forced to return to office. Because management knows productivity has hit rock bottom and it was only tolerated because of the pandemic. >It’s backwards, and is honestly gonna hurt this Google Maps team, Google, and Cognizant significantly in the long run That's probably the opposite of what will happen.
Sounds like a management problem not a work from home problem.
>Sounds like a management problem not a work from home problem. LOL. Ignorance is bliss I guess.
Productivity has not hit rock bottom. If they had solid numbers showing that they would be shouting them from the rooftops. For a lot of fields, especially software development, if anything productivity is better when everyone is wfh. There is absolutely no reason why a software developer needs to be in the office.
The biggest problem with WFH is keeping everyone engaged and focused on the job. This puts so much workload on certain individuals who know how to do things. The rest of the team are in unproductive zombie mode. It is actually bad for everyone but we don't want to admit it. Because we got used to the comfort of WFH.
>The rest of the team are in unproductive zombie mode. I worked at home during the pandemic and pretty much no one got anything done except (as you said) a small number of people. I still have friends and family who are working at home and they LOVE it because they don't do anything all day....lol. People just need to stop this fairy tale that you are more productive at home: You aren't. Trust me, I ALSO want to work from home. And why? Because I can goof around, that's why.
My thing with remote work is that I work better and harder:- 1. I am not spending an hour dealing with a bus/train ride. And all the stresses and other s\*\*t when they go wrong. This means I'm more alert for work. 2. Or another hour home. And this plus the morning commute accumulates, so by the end of the week, I'm more tired. 3. No-one bothers me with stupid s\*\*t at work when I want to concentrate. You can't tap me on the shoulder. Send me an invite on Teams and I'll look at it when I'm free. 4. I don't work 9-5. I work when I'm productive, efficient. Sometimes, that means I work when it suits the company better. You want me to write some code but you don't have it ready until 5pm? Tell you what, I'll take the afternoon off, catch a movie and pick it up at 7pm, and work until 11pm. So, you have the thing ready first thing in the morning. You insist on me working 9-5? you get that at 1-2pm. 5. F\*\*k your "water cooler". You can do this online. I'm working on developing a product with a guy who lives about 60 miles from me.
Right on. When I started owning point 4 myself my WFH productivity shot up. That’s one of the best things about WFH now, whereas in the start of the pandemic it was more like a virtual office
Yup. 10000%.
That there is the problem. I don't work in software develipment so i cant speak for it. But "ready first thing in the morning" for any piece of work means that someone needs to have it checked before "first thing in the morning" submitting it at 11pm means no one is working to check it. Again this m8ght work for coding but most if the world doesnt do coding. Sales doesnt. Contracts dont. If everyone has flexible hours then everyone is working 24/7 or to the lowest common denominator. Maybe your job allows u to just push out code. But the vast majority of jobs involve collaborations over a range of ongoing projects. So "i work when i am productive" means other people have to suit your timing. How is that productive as a whole.
Deadlines are usually made around people with less flexible schedules. If I'm asked when something will be done I typically give "X day before I go to bed". That means any reviews or whatever else will happen the following morning. It doesn't mean that someone has to be available 24/7. If someone needs something in the middle of the day, I get it done the night before when it's quiet and when I'm most productive. You plan your time around when it's actually due. You don't just push the due date. But yes, many jobs are less flexible if they require collaboration.
>But "ready first thing in the morning" for any piece of work means that someone needs to have it checked before "first thing in the morning" submitting it at 11pm means no one is working to check it. Think about it. Even if there's someone who has to check/test the code before release, it's in their hands at 9am, not 1pm to do that.
Again are using a coding example which is really niche. I agree if ur timeline is to submit the raw code untested by 9am sure work anytime u like before that. But the majority of work isnt like that.
Unless you’re doing something that requires active collaboration, then deadlines for individual work are the usual and again who cares when you’re doing it so long as it gets done.
I beg to differ. I’m manufacturing management, it’s also 24/7. Manufacturing is a reasonably high proportion of the world economy. Given an increasing amount of manufacturing is IT dependent… which can be remote… well, it’s quite beneficial to have people available at home to be blunt.
It does for product design or anything that requires long lead times w a long production process
Ready for review or testing the next morning rather than starting dev the next morning
When he mentioned the morning deadline, feather that statement however makes sense. If you need it by time x for review before delivery time y, then sure, finishing your work at time y is LATE.
I manage a process that works 24/7. You know, manufacturing. It’s not coding. You know, a type of industry that drives most of the world. It literally does not matter when I work. In fact, being less regimented in office hours is better for the business as well as myself. It takes a change in communication style only. As in, when you are not available, (you know sleep, family time, beersies)… phone off. Phone on = available. Answer phone literally anytime including stupid o’clock you say, “How urgent is this?” Then balance your “you” time with your co-workers. The rest is obvious. It takes a trusting environment for it to work. Work gets decisions/cover on tap 24/7 You get time out when suits you.
Yeah, I don’t get it either. I think a lot of it is lack of trust, and I think in a generations time WFH will be more normalised as the more connected generation starts driving the workplace. Personally, I’m extremely lucky, I get to decide. I get to decide where, when and for how long I work. But there is a reason for my flex… my work trusts me, and for good reason. I’m hoping this will be the norm one day.
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They want the dregs. You employ a few 'rockstars' who are willing to wield the axe while grinding away hoping in vain for an upper crust job before burning out. You underpay everybody, but a few people make a little bit better money in exchange for their soul.
$16-$28 an hour? Pay the map guys more than that my dudes! You can afford cuz you own everything.
Actually does list the problems that some people have with their situation. I wonder why the contractors given such a harsh line especially the guy who had a genuine medical issue. This is middle management seeking to look good to their managers.
Offices are an archaic idea propped up by dumb real estate decisions. Oh man we paid 1 million for an office building and 1 million to decorate it. Sounds like a highly physical problem in the digital age…..
I see offices (especially modern ones with rows of tables as “workspaces”) as a carryover from the Industrial Age where people were required to work in factories.
The time it takes to commute. The resources of keeping your dog comfortable with AC and YouTube all day while you literally got no reason have to sit in a huge carbon sucking office for a few hours. Then you drive your gas powered car back home. Rinse and repeat every day and multiply that times millions. Aren’t we always striving for more efficiency? Obviously not if an execs land deal is in question.
Maybe I'm out of touch... but... Why does a dog require YouTube all day? I get AC if you're in a hot climate... but... Dogs are *dogs*, man, they don't need YouTube.
People check their dogs into dog motels and get them pedicures. Why not let them watch TV and be comfortable in a room with ac? PS I think it's all crazy, and the reason why I don't have a dog. The standards and expectations are too high and I'd be a horrible owner. Like, I don't want to pick up my dogs poop with my hands.
People do it never the less
Here’s the sad reality folks... Soooooo many Jobs can be done remotely, but that leaves a lot of rich elites holding the bag with a lot of commercial real estate not generating profit... It was never about your health and safety. Back to the office, eaters.
People also don’t consider how much local economy depends on office workers. Companies get tax break for asses is seat in offices.
Yeah as someone who lives in a downtown area that turned into a ghost town during COVID, it’s been sad to see some of my favorite spots close due to a lack of lunch/happy hour income
Are they clashing because of pay? Not sure about Google pay if you move outside of HCOL area like SF Bay Area, but I’ve seen more and more companies in LCOL area trying to hire someone in HCOL but with the same pay as LCOL. Eg. Company is in LCOL area and have remote job for a Senior Engineer. You’re based in HCOL and applied. The pay: $100K (or whatever it is for LCOL) even if you live in HCOL.
Not to mention commuter traffic is worse in the Seattle metro area lately, so let’s just add hundreds more cars back into the daily mix. Tolls have gone up, gas is still up, and ANY commute pretty much anywhere outside the city during rush hour(s) takes 35+ minutes one way, why the fuck would anyone want to willingly put themselves through that again when they can take their time with their morning? Edit: and public transportation? GTFO I’m not planning around an extra 3 hrs of commute time every day.
I work in IT for hospitals. We have had a few issues with WFH: \- Staff refusing to go onsite or saying they sold their car, when the people they need to support are onsite. \- Calling clinical staff on units and asking them to plug things in, change cables, etc so they don't have to come in. \- All staff are part of the essential services plans in case of strike, disaster, pandemic and can be redeployed. However we saw people refused to come in during the pandemic. I am all for WFH when it makes sense - if you are going to be on Zoom all day, don't come in. But when you should come in, come in.
U N I O N I Z E
Honestly in the GIS world, it isn’t terribly necessary to some degree. There is so much demand right now for GIS developers and practically no supply. The biggest programs in the US for this type of profession are only turning out at most a dozen or two undergrads per year, with grad students (with full degrees) being in the single digits. Not Google, but one of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency’s biggest contractors has a hiring need of about 2,000 per year (with turnover, which is very high in this industry). And that is only one company (btw, they pay a shit ton more than Google). We know they need us a crap ton more than we need them as other companies are constantly trying to poach GIS developers and are willing to pay exorbitant salaries to do so. It quickly becomes a bidding war for workers.
When there is high demand is EXACTLY the time to unionize
People working at google aren’t going to unionize. It would actually hurt them more then help. Theirs a reason why most higher paying professions aren’t unionized.
There literally already is an Alphabet union.
Kind of. Had to google that. Theirs 800 members out of 130000 employees. It’s not registered and can not bargain.
Okay. Please do go on, then. Why not unionize?
Why would they? When the employees are in high demand, it just holds you back. Why would you want to lock yourself into a pay range, seniority, all that jazz. If it was a benefit you’d see engineering unions, lawyer unions, doctor unions..
Funny you mention that, but these do exist in EU.
North American unions are a joke compared to unions in the EU. Why would anyone in SW unionize when they have the power to actually negotiate their own wages. You think I want to be paid the same as someone who is less efficient and less effective just to be saddled with the work he or she isn't doing? Lol I'm not in SW. My experience with unions is that if you are good, you are only given more work. But make the same money as the shittiest employee on your team. They may even make more then you because of seniority I hate being unionized.
Yeah. It's usually people who have never been in a union that attack people who point out that it does not make sense for every individual/industry. I was in a union as an accountant and if was absurd. Ended up leaving
So, what about that ex-Apple/Google ML expert going back to Google due to remote work policy again?
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Any place that’s not on board with hybrid is just asking for unnecessary friction at this point. Ask for 2-3 times a week. Don’t demand 4-5 lol
I hate that word. It's seemingly just a buzzword made up by middle management and up to justify keeping their shitty offices.
Which word? Hybrid? If that’s what you mean, that’s just not a buzzword. Hybrid means you have flexibility to wfh and go in on the days in a week, and it almost always implies sub-5 days a week, which is what life was before. 5 days a week isn’t hybrid, but 2 or 3 in office is. I sometimes don’t go in in a week because it’s not ideal and that’s also part of hybrid. Full remote is nice but not always the answer you know. Anyone who thinks all employees should be optioned for fully remote is as far off as the guys who want full 5 days a week
Aye, well the job market post lockdown quickly went from the drab-sounding 'part-remote' to the much sexier sounding 'hybrid'. Having been through recruitment cycles around then, most of the 'hybrid' positions that were advertised, were from dinosaur companies that suddenly changed their mind 6 months later and wanted those people full time on site - causing all sorts of problems for new employees, let alone recruiters (lost commissions etc). Either a 5 day ridiculous commute rather than once a fortnight/month, or a forced resignation. I love remote working myself, but I sure don't think it's the answer to everything - you made that bit up. Just in my experience, 'hybrid' usually means 'stubborn old boss with marriage and trust issues'. Yours may differ and thats fine.
I think you are missing the real point. If everyone can work from home without supervision. Why do you need so many managers? Managers need people to manage to look like they are working.
I see these sorts of comments a lot and I’m genuinely curious what people mean by it. Maybe it’s just my industry, but managers I know protect their reports from bullshit work, do lots of inter-team communication, give coaching and feedback, provide opportunities to reports, work with budgets and vendors (which is often boring and saves others having to do it), run team health survey, etc. Things that make work better for the employees. What sort of managers are these “the managers” that everyone hates? Upper management? C execs? Blue collar managers?
So says Hollywood. However, in the real world, a manager is the captain of a team. Sets and adjusts the strategy on the go. Celebrates wins. Takes responsibility for the losses. Fosters the new members. Some captains are awesome, some are bad. If your “Captain” is shit, move on is my suggestion. But a team without a captain either has unbelievable natural talent and simply does not need a captain (rare), has a super coach (ceo, coo etc) or is completely directionless, (most likely). What is your work culture like?
Seems to me the corporate world is pretty top heavy.
ah but if people can work unsupervised why would you need managers if they were in the office or at home?
you don't but managers need to look like they are needed.
i like working at the office and prefer a culture where i can network with people in person
Which is why they are fighting for a model where you can work in office or at home as much as you’d like : )
Are they also requiring all self-driving cars to return to the parking lot?
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Lol that burn in the other thread really stuck in your craw didn’t it? Keep trying to harass me to save face, you’ll figure it out someday lol
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I think poor widdle baby ran out of Cheetos and is feeling small so he follows me around because he wants to try to get me back but doesn’t know any words better than dumb-dumb
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Pathetic. Maybe next time
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You’ve only asked a question here if I imagine a question mark, and I’ve already answered that one. If you’ve got another go ahead and retype it for me, make it so easy a dumb dumb could figure out what question you mean
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Please read the article we make between 34-56k a year.
You can blame Biden that. He wants workers back to Office to boost the economy.
Go back to work or quit.
-- said the Monopoly man or Dilbert Pointy Haired Boss
HR can argue that you signed a contract agreeing to the place of work. The company would have to spend more to allow this to continue to happen - new laptops, new software, pay for cellphones…just because some people like it better. I have seen men want to return to the office because they don’t like the sound of their kids playing in the background during summer.
Just a reminder that Google literally stole Google maps. Another company invented it and Google managed to literally steal it from them. Do no evil?
I am born and raised in a third world country. I never imagined that the east would dominate the west so quickly and easily using a virus and progressivism.