Google, Facebook make statements to staff about working from home for 2020 | Hacker News Reader

Google, Facebook make statements to staff about working from home for 2020

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154 pointsericzawo172 comments

Ubisoft is going to start letting people return to the office starting from the 11th of May (this Monday).

It will be in stages, where people who use specialised equipment (such as high end artistic systems such as well calibrated touch displays, or people who have sound design rooms) will return first, and they will be required to keep at least a seat of distance from their nearest neighbour. I believe we will rapidly return to the office assuming nothing bad occurs following the first wave.

To say we as a company are not truly ready for remote work would be a major understatement, our entire security model depends on us being on premises, in fact, if it weren't for our recent migration to office365 (and AzureAD) it would not have been possible _at all_. File shares are inaccessible, along with HR resources, basically nothing except outlook is available externally.

That said: this has been a fantastic experience for me, my backlog of tasks has become anemic, I attribute this to the fact that I have a home office with real visual and auditory privacy, we aggressively pursue even denser open office landscapes in our studios.[0] I wonder if it's the same in Google, though I somehow suspect not...

I really hope there is some permanence to the remote working situation for us. Does anyone have a similar experience to me?

[0]: Our office: https://youtu.be/Nse-7cJhxpQ?t=92 (screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/km0UcVk.png)

There is a paper describing some of the remote work security stuff from Google (though obviously the paper goes into a lot of things other than that):

https://research.google/pubs/pub45728/

Yeah I heard about concepts like BeyondCorp before, I think it's a really interesting methodology but it requires a certain consistency in application and a real forward thinking.

You can't just put SMB shares on the internet, for instance. And most of our authentication mechanisms that currently exist are woefully insecure, but they're "bolstered" by being only accessible from certain VLANs in the network.

How is Ubisoft planning to handle wrongful death lawsuits if their employees -- or their families -- get sick and die as a result of returning too soon?

Probably by citing government easement of lock downs and making common sense workplace decisions to hamper the spread of coronavirus as recommended by the CDC.

The coronavirus isn't magic. You can take sensible precautions and not catch it.

Those sensible precautions include not going to work where it's impossible to follow proper social distancing.

> You can take sensible precautions and not catch it.

A bit nitpicky, but significant: you can take sensible precautions and reduce the risk of transmission - but there's no reasonable strategy to not catch it.

Correct. Even lock-downs haven’t slowed this down much.

What? Lockdowns are having a tremendous and mathematically obvious impact.

I'm not sure what your source of information is, but I'd love to see the train of thought that has lead to this comment.

https://youtu.be/E2Fv-nJCfrk?t=56

I just looked up the restrictions for France specifically, and apparently they are set to expire on May 11 -- so that makes more sense. Where I am, most restrictions are still in place and going back to offices now seems ridiculously early, but maybe the situation is different in France.

I was curious since lawsuits over premature return seem like a major business risk, and I was wondering if they'd accounted for it, but if the French govt is allowing it, then yeah, they can probably just point at that to justify it.

What's the difference if you die from the flu you contracted at work?

The amount of risk.

Correct. The mortality rate for the flu is 0.1%; for Covid-19 is at least 1-4%—as much as 40x as deadly.

There’s a significantly higher risk of dying from Covid than the flu.

perhaps if you are a nursing home resident,

for under 40 the flu and many other diseases are far more deadly

Covid is 0.1-0.5%, not as high as you claim.

Nobody knows.

None of the epidemiologist or public health experts have ever said the mortality rate is that low.

It obviously varies by location—during the peak in Italy, it was close to 8% in the Lombardy region.

UCSF epidemiologist said 0.8% with adequate medical care.

Course if you take the 15-20% infection rate and excess deaths in New York you get 1% to 1.3%.

The flu isn't at the forefront of everyone's minds, whereas the coronavirus is; most of the world's in lockdown over it right now. If someone is called back to work early while lockdowns are still going on, the bereaved have someone to point their finger at and say "It's your fault this happened!" -- it seems much more likely to me that they would pursue legal action as a result of these conditions, and consequently it's an important business risk to consider. (It may well be a lesser risk than staying shut from a business's perspective if they're risking the company going bankrupt anyway as a result of not reopening -- but I was curious if they were accounting for it.)

Of course, it's a fair question if we should've been holding organizations to a higher standard for preventing the spread of diseases before. My mom died of the flu when I was 8. If people took infectious diseases more seriously and held organizations responsible for policies that permit diseases to spread so easily, maybe we could do something about flu deaths as well?

People don't normally take many steps to avoid the flu, whereas if you're required to go into work and that's the only time you see people it seems you could make a strong case that being required to go in to work was unsafe and caused you to catch the coronavirus.

When Trump asked business leaders for feedback on re-opening the economy, this was one of the primary issues discussed.

"Major U.S. business lobbying groups are asking Congress to pass measures that would protect companies large and small from coronavirus-related lawsuits when states start to lift pandemic restrictions and businesses begin to reopen."

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-li...

It's pretty telling who the government really cares about. When ordering the meat packing plants to stay open in the midst of the pandemic, the top concern voiced by Trump was not about worker health and safety but about corporate liability for any lawsuits.

The fact that we need to eat food for sustainance was probably also taken into consideration.

There are at least a few foods besides meats

What form of food can be produced by employees working from home?

Any job that essential should have staff living on site in full isolation. Conditions may even be better for many migrant and illegal farm hands.

You really think things will be better when there's no food to go around?

I think people will be fine if they don't eat meat for a little while. They will not be fine if they die from Covid-19.

You're not considering second order effects. Massive, instantaneous changes in diet are not healthy.. what if that ends up making people more susceptible to illness? Not to mention those workers are out of a job if the plants go bankrupt. And no, "printing money" isn't a solution.

It is unlikely that any such lawsuits will happen.

Video game development tends to be trickier for working from home though. Assets tend to be very large (double digits gigabytes), so having fast connectivity is expected in many situations, and slower home connections are rather painful for that.

Many jobs don't require nearly as much bandwidth though, and can be done from home.

>Assets tend to be very large (double digits gigabytes), so having fast connectivity is expected in many situations, and slower home connections are rather painful for that.

If that were the case... I would probably look into using X-windows forwarding or remote desktop. Wouldn't it make more sense to keep all assets on the on-prem network instead of sending it back/forth to the employee's remote workstation?

Yes, we're doing exactly this with Citrix. It is bandwidth intensive though (70MB/s).

I think the parent disregards a lot of jobs that require physical presence. Strong internet is not a problem in most of Europe. Especially in the Scandinavian region.

> Ubisoft is going to start letting people return to the office

You say you're working at Massive which is a studio "part of the Ubisoft family". Is it the ubisoft part that hinders remote-work? I would have thought that such technical things are in responsibility of the local business. And I think the decision of going back to the office should also be in the local business as it's highly region dependent.

Would you say you work for Ubisoft or for Massive?

That's an interesting question. I work for Massive, and while there is some level of local autonomy there is also a global pandemic response to this.

When it comes to who decides it goes:

Swedish Law > Massive > Ubisoft > whim of worker.

The Swedish Pandemic response has been to recommend: "if your company can work from home then it must make every effort to do so". And so it has been.

Since that happened Ubisoft has decided to close down the majority of its studios, with the strategy being to open them up as soon as the law permits. In Sweden there has been no "law" as far as I know, but Massive prefers to keep to the recommendation.

So as far as it goes, the Ubisoft strategy is taken into strong consideration, but yes, I believe Massive gets the ultimate say on this. And I feel quite strongly that Massive is a unique studio in Ubisoft. There is definitely an internal struggle for independence and to retain its identity.. sadly this comes at the cost of some of our games. :(

The headline overstates the body of the article a bit although it's not really inaccurate.

It is an interesting question to ask, come fall or winter, whether--if plenty at some companies can work from home and life/productivity goes on for much of a year--what does office life look like going forward?

Most companies will still have offices but I wonder if things shift to more of a hoteling type system with conference rooms and other collaboration spaces with people coming in a couple days per week or so.

As WFH becomes the norm, office life will become shittier over time. Less budgeting will go into fancy offices, they will become more spartan unassuming buildings. People who have to go to offices to work will be seen as second class citizens too poor or too unequipped to do any work from home. They will be seen as slow, old school workers who become more of a liability for workplace harassment policies or accidents. If you have an excellent home with a great internet connection then why go to a dirty, nasty, public office where you sit in an uncomfortable chair using cheap equipment and even risk being groped in a hallway or break room? Not to mention the risk of being killed along your commute twice a day. All while the remote workers sit gently in their favorite spot by the warm glow of a sunlit window, quietly getting tasks done as they listen to soft music coming from their home speakers. When the workday ends the office worker has to make a mad rush and brave traffic to get home. The remote worker can end the day whenever the time is right, with all the ceremony of an index finger bringing their laptop lid down to a close; what’s for dinner honey?

Very few people will choose to go to an office, working from home is a status symbol and a sign of being a well educated knowledge worker. This is even the case now during the pandemic where plenty of people boast they would be fine staying home all year while the poor and destitute are begging to go back to an office or worksite because it’s the only way they can put food on the table. Their value is mostly in their physical bodies, not their pure knowledge.

And if you can’t work from home, you’ll choose to work from some communal workspace or cafe of your choosing before ever choosing to make a dreaded commute to an office.

You're overstating it. I gave up a dedicated space in my local office before all this. But I'd be happy to go in a day or two a week if there were good reasons to do so. But most of my team is very distributed and (during normal times) most of us travel a lot so there aren't going to be a lot of serendipitous encounters.

What is probably true is that those who thrive with office socializing and activities will find the norm at companies where coming into an office becomes more about having scheduled team meetings and collaborative work on specific days less pleasant than in the past.

If it becomes less pleasant those people will cease to exist, nobody will be left to pine for the days of jocular office socialization.

It's about socializing with your coworkers, not the office environment itself. Many of us just really like to personally know the people we do business with.

That and my boss' boss really likes 'managing by walking around'. He tries to make up for it now by sending weekly updates, but just like he says, it is just not the same.

GP is definitely overstating it. (GP is, in fact, so overstated that Poe's Law comes to mind.)

What so many people here on HN forget is that software is not the world. WFH works fantastically for software, because you don't need anything other than a computer to make software. Pretty much everything in the world other than software, not so much.

To pick just one nicely concrete example, who do you think makes computers? Electronics labs full of advanced equipment aren't found in ordinary people's homes. I can't do my job entirely from home without spending ~my annual salary on equipment, and even if I or my company wanted to pay for that, I don't have anywhere at home to put it.

That's a lot of hot takes in one go. How much of that do you actually believe?

> If you have an excellent home with a great internet connection

That's the biggest if I see. I moved across regions within my country. Where I currently am and with my current salary I can rent a room without much trobules and have access to an great internet connection. With such connection, working from home wasn't a big problem.

Where I come from and with my current salary, I could easily buy an excellent house but wouldn't have a great internet connection. That would really, really affect the quality of my work and my working experience (as somebody said about videogames: videogames don't make kids violent, LAG DOES).

In order to make what you say come true, public administration should really start investing heavily in connectivity. FTTH (fiber to the home) should really be the norm.

Internet connectivity infrastructure should really be a basic right and public utility.

I’ve also wondered about that sort of hoteling system. It would seem to make sense if the companies get their own sanitation and testing protocols operational. It could allow them time to slowly ramp up the number of employees who share common space, rather than some kind of grand, onetime reopening.

>The headline overstates the body of the article a bit although it's not really inaccurate.

The headline is really annoying. It takes the extremes of the two policies and combines them into a single policy that is even more extreme.

Google's policy is to handle offices on a case by case basis. Some offices are targeting June for reopening, but most employees won't be back in the office until October at the earliest.

Facebook's policy is no one will be forced back into the office this year if the employee wants to continue working from home. Otherwise some offices are planning to open up in July if employees want to return.

Neither of those policies are a universal directive to "plan to work from home for the year".

Ok, I've attempted to fix that issue with the title. This required making up new language, which is the worst, but I can't find any representative phrase anywhere in the article. If someone else can, let us know and we can change it.

Most of my coworkers who normally work in the office (I am remote, and WFH) seem pretty eager to get back to it. Many people prefer the social environment of the office, and don't really have the space at home in expensive cities to work. Or they live with family members, which makes it harder to focus, and can make video calls harder.

This is exactly how it is for me and most of my Co workers but going back to the office will not be the same. In person meetings will be avoided, and keeping distance between people will defeat the purpose of being in the same space to start with. The only benefit is getting the dedicated space for work which may not be available at home.

You mean WeWork, don't you?

Not really. Companies can have dedicated office spaces that have a limited number of offices/cubicles dedicated to specific employees. Dedicate area to reserved and unreserved conference rooms/enclaves. And have desk or other space for drop-in employees. Also cafeterias, etc. Where I work, there's already a lot of space reserved for other than dedicated offices/desks.

Companies can absolutely have their own spaces that aren't primarily oriented around the idea of everyone having their own dedicated desk.

Some of this is due to local coronavirus lockdowns and the uncertainty around when they will be lifted, but there is also uncertainty about when schools and day cares will open again. Providing child care will keep a lot of people at home even if they aren't required to be.

On top of that, a lot of people won't want to go back to the office, not because they enjoy working from home, but because they will still be afraid of getting the virus. Being at the office probably won't feel normal anyway due to continued social distancing and the use of masks.

Combine that with concerns that the virus may surge again in the Fall, maybe necessitating another lockdown, and you have a recipe for working at home much longer than what might be legally required.

>On top of that, a lot of people won't want to go back to the office, not because they enjoy working from home, but because they will still be afraid of getting the virus. Being at the office probably won't feel normal anyway due to continued social distancing and the use of masks

That's where I'm at. My workplace put out a survey to see how people felt about going back to the office next month, and I don't think anyone was willing to risk it. We'd be wearing masks, taking public transit to/from the office, and sanitizing our hands every 15 minutes.

Having spoken to some management people, this survey is mostly being done just to confirm that we should discuss getting rid of the office entirely. Which would be a huge cost saving for us.

Same discussion happening at my company. Makes me wonder if office real estate is going to crash and burn...

yes it is

One of my colleagues told one of the upper managers that if schools don't reopen and he's asked to come back in the office he's going to either come back along with the kids or not come back at all.

As someone who has been closely engaged in the tech world, but is outside of the culture of Silicon Valley, one cultural pattern I've noticed over and over again is the tendency for people in SV to state with utter confidence and conviction that we'll all be living our lives completely differently than we have been by this time next year, and it will be a permanent and culturally sweeping change.

The fact that inevitably only about 10% of those transformations turn out to be sort of true, and happen 10x slower than predicted, never seems to break this cycle of breathless certainty.

Maybe it's true, maybe this is really it, and the whole idea of closely clustered cities around shared commercial goals and people working closely together in the real world is finally ending. We shall see.

10% is still pretty good.

Indeed, very impressive. And Silicon Valley is quite a powerhouse of wealth creation. But the point still stands.

Seen an anecdote saying we overestimate the impact of a technology over 5 years but underestimate it over 10 years. Seems relevant here

I'd say it's more akin to how fusion power is always 30 years away.

And self driving cars, and augmented reality, and personal assistant robots, and so on and so forth.

That's part of the magic though. When you reach the state where you both believe (it's useful motivation) and don't believe (because you're not a fool) that what you're doing is definitely going to change the world, you have achieved SV enlightenment.

If my company announces WFH for the rest of the year, I'll be moving out of San Francisco in a heart beat. The office has been the only thing keeping me here for a long time now.

I imagine SF natives might say, "Good riddance, don't let the door hit you on the way out," and I completely agree. I don't have issues with the city itself, but the value you get for your money here is completely abysmal if you're a renter or potential home buyer.

Edit: reworded.

Careful, some of my teammates and I are trying to do that and we have to get it cleared by management first as it changes what state taxes they will have to pay.

Huh? People move states all the time. There are IRS rules about which state you should be deemed a resident, and you'll need to file state tax return in both states for the year in which you move. But there's no magic about needing a lease. I'm sure there are thousands of people living in their cars still paying taxes.

For the employer's taxes, are there incentives for hiring in-state? Or would it impact where they are considered to have a presence, for sales tax purposes?

>considered to have a presence, for sales tax purposes

Mostly irrelevant these days post-Wayfair.

>For the employer's taxes, are there incentives for hiring in-state?

I am not an accountant but there is some overhead with adding employees in different states and, especially, countries. And things like payments into unemployment pools may differ by state.

This is common in places like New York City, so it's well understood for companies on how to make it work. It's not very common in San Francisco to have commuters from out of state.

I work for a remote company headquartered in California with employees all over the US. Every state, even states with no state income tax, have different codes and expectations when it comes to taxes. Adding a new state to our payroll system takes a significant amount of time and effort to get right.

Unemployment insurance (and family/medical leave), workers compensation, and health insurance are the biggest issues. Adding a new state for one employee can be a lot of overhead.

I think the bigger worry isn't that they'll fuck up filing with the IRS, but that in order for them to be compliant you'll have to notify them you moved, at which point they'll be onto your clever scheme and demand you take a cost of living pay cut.

Come to Atlanta!

There are satellite offices for many of the major tech companies (some of them not so "satellite" at 200ish engineers).

The cost of living is cheap, it's not cold in the summer, and there's so much culture. Atlanta is in a forest, so if you like outdoors stuff, you'd be in the right place.

Sadly no mountains (I am actually moving to Atlanta in a month, for other reasons). Decent rock climbing though. And great fruit selection.

We do have mountains!

We're also only an hour and a half from Chattanooga, TN, which has amazing mountain climbing.

What's the political situation like there? I hear about things like voter suppression by the Republicans and other shenanigans in those states.

The city and (most) of the suburbs are very blue. Atlanta itself is rated as one of the most LGBT-friendly cities in the country [1].

Unfortunately, the state is still red due to the population living outside of the MSA. The city and the suburbs are resoundingly blue, though [2].

The governor pulled some very shady voter suppression tactics in the last election. [3, 4] They're afraid, and they know their time is short.

We need more blue voters. We're close to turning the state, and that would be a huge victory.

[1] https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/top-places-for-lgbtq-fol...

[2] https://www.ajc.com/atlanta-neighborhood-2016-presidential-e...

[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/10/30/did-racia...

[4] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/6/18253689/vo...

Why are the red suburbs red?

The reason why the cost of living is sane in Republican states is because they don't place undue restrictions on housing supply. You might acknowledge that each political party has significant trade-offs with the policies they support, and move to a red state with that in mind.

Factually inaccurate. The reason the cost of living is lower in red states is simply due to location. People desire to live in coastal cities like NY, SF, LA, Seattle, etc.

Supply and demand drive prices. Do you think real estate is expensive on the upper east side in Manhattan because of an undue restriction on housing supply? Or is it just because many people want to live and work in NYC?

I don't know much about Manhattan, but SF is not allowing supply to meet the demand being signaled by absurd prices. Density in the neighborhoods is very low and construction that would increase it is almost never approved.

The SF bay area is an outlier, and yes, I agree about the restriction of supply problems we face (I live here). But to simply paint all blue states as similar to SF is inaccurate.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/slideshows/these-are...

The fastest growing region in the United States is the South. Of the top 10 fastest growing states in 2019...only 2 of them voted blue in 2016. California is growing at its slowest rate in history:

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-population-grow...

Yes, supply and demand drive prices, but if you artificially constrict supply like California does with absurdly restrictive zoning laws and inflexible housing policies that only act to protect inflationary ponzi scheme, then you get the present-day California real estate market bubble.

Doesn't Houston disprove this? Or Tokyo? Supply and demand are effected by the local regulations in place.

I love SF, but no reason to overpay for a small studio when I can't even go to a tech meetup...left March 14th.

I don't want to leave my friends here.

Watching the SF bubble pop is going to be funny.

will you move to the outskirts or somewhere else entirely?

I am trying to decide where I want to be if I have a choice. Currently I am in Seattle, dont like the city much. No offense to the city, its just not for me as I like 75+ degree days. I thought about trying California, but I'd loose so much of my income to rent and taxes. Still trying to decide

Austin? A growing tech city, gets in the 70s nearly year round, no state income tax. I hear a lot of devs are moving there from California

Actually, in the high 90's for much of the year unfortunately with obnoxious humidity, and very chilly in the wintertime. It's a bit extreme sometimes, but it definitely is better than Seattle IMO.

Imagine living in Manhattan right now. (1) All the culture and lifestyle you're paying a high premium for is unavailable, and (2) the apartment you're trapped in is tiny. (Compared to what you'd have elsewhere for that money.)

So I agree, relocation makes sense for some people.

A lot of companies in the Bay Area will cut your pay if you move to another state which has a lower cost of living. At some companies it is an official HR policy -- compensation is adjusted for cost of living.

Don't expect to continue making Bay Area money after moving to another state unless you get an official guarantee from HR that your compensation won't change. If you stay in California you will probably be fine but you should still make sure.

Amazon and Microsoft have announced similar plans through at least October already as well:

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/local-business/many-bu...

https://www.geekwire.com/2020/microsoft-updates-wfh-policy-a...

This is going to have a slow, but material impact on house prices in the Bay area over the next few years.

Upward or downward?

I would say downward because it's decreasing the demand to be close to these giant tech company campuses, but the bay area housing market has and always seems to defy typical economic patterns for housing.

Throw in unemployment and upcoming inflation with the fed cash dump, and it's still very unpredictable.

But at the same time people will want nicer homes as they're spending more time in them...

I guess people living without gardens are pretty stressed right now.

People are not buying nicer homes for a temporary shutdown. I have coworkers video conferencing from a desk in a closet and don't care.

The question though is about a "new normal" where people work from home a large chunk of the time--and, yes, if your apartment isn't just a place you sleep I think that affects the decision-making of a lot of people about where they live. I don't really see coworkers videoconferencing from closets but, then, most of us aren't in unusually high CoL areas.

Counterpoint: I'm a parent and I very much care. I won't be moving to the suburbs tomorrow but it has us asking questions about our ideal life: if we're not taking the subway into the office every day then maybe city life isn't quite as worth it.

Counterpoint: Would you take out a new 30-yr mortgage right now to buy a home in the suburbs? Then why aren't you? That's my point.

Hmm I disagree I think many people have heavily optimised for never needing to be in their home except for sleeping. They work in an office, they work out at a gym, they eat out every meal, their do their laundry at work, public parks are their green space... and this probably now looks like a very a bad idea for the long-term, even if this particular situation clears up quickly.

Not really. I find apartment blocks without an enclosed garden to be annoying, but other than that, it doesn't matter too much.

How do you imagine proximity to work becoming irrelevant affecting housing prices around job hubs?

Clearly downward? If you don't have to work at an office in the Bay Area why would you continue paying $3K/mo in Rent or praying your startup has a good exit so you can pay $1M cash for a starter house?

Not clear at all. Effective WFH requires a bigger house, which would tend to favor remote areas. But partial WFH, where you're still in the office ~1 day/week on average, will push for _both_ larger and closer housing.

An hour and a half commute five days a week is a brutal grind. Once a week it doesn’t sound so bad.

Definitely. The Bay Area is a bit tougher to get out of really expensive housing depending upon where you work. But I'm (at rush hour) something like 90 minutes out of Boston whether driving or rail/subway. And housing is, if not depressed Midwest cheap, pretty reasonable in many towns that far out.

That is, as you say, pretty brutal daily--which I never really had to do even when I worked in the city. But it's only a mild PITA once a week or so.

Not to mention that if you're in a day a week for specific meetings (vs it being your "office" the expectations about when you will arrive there are different. You may be able to travel during quieter hours which can be faster and less stressful.

I WFH "effectively" in an 800 sq foot apartment. If I didn't have a dog, I could probably do so in less space.

How many people are in that 800 square feet though? If it's not shared with anyone else but the dog, it's a pretty large space.

You don't know how big the dog is. ;)

In all seriousness, what would it matter if I shared that space with 1 or 2 additional people?

It matters in that you ideally want a private office.

There’s a difference between “effective” WFH and “ideal” WFH. I was stating I’m able to work “effectively.” Besides, I don’t even get a private office at work, so, why should it matter much?

Friends who works at FAANGs say their employers made it clear they would adjust comp downwards if employees were to transfer to new locations during WFH. (hasn't happened yet, but it sounds like that's what would happen if their employees moved to WFH from elsewhere).

The calculation as to whether or not that's worth it would depend on the specifics.

Agree. I think you’ll still have young workers coming to the city.

But there’s less pressure to stay once you establish contacts and a solid job.

I tend to agree although there are a lot of factors at play.

-- Obviously, the overall employment situation, in tech, in the Bay Area, and elsewhere. Unemployed people who don't otherwise have roots in the Bay Area aren't going to hang around and pay current rents there.

-- The degree to which companies relax WFH policies but still want employees to come in on a semi-regular basis.

-- The degree to which other companies decide that it doesn't matter where at least some employees live so long as they're available for video calls and other synchronous communications during regular working hours. (And what the salary impact is for those who don't live in higher CoL areas.)

-- Anecdotally, at least in public, a lot of execs in "tech" and elsewhere seem to be a lot more open to at least partial remote work.

How this affects hiring is another big factor. If you WFH 100% of the time but need to find a new job you are limited to other 100% WFH

Yes. There often tends to be a conflation between "Remote within a reasonable timezone" and mostly WFH but able to drop in for meetings once every week or two. But the two cases are actually pretty different in terms of where you can live. The latter means you don't need to have an easy commute but you still need to be in a 1-2hr driving range.

That said, I don't live in the Bay Area.

Is this true? I would assume most places are hiring with the assumption that office workers will return to the office once we get through this. The company I work for is certainly hiring under this plan.

Speaking to my coworkers, most of them are not happy to be working from home. I work at a company where remote is an option, so those who wanted to already were.

This pandemic has hastened my plans to move to Tahoe. The lockdown takes all the benefits of city living away.

I understand, but I must state the obvious - the lockdown is not forever.

No, but the long term effects are unpredictable. I certainly wouldn't encourage anyone in a city to pack up and move to rural Alaska because of the situation.

But I suspect many people on the fence about living in this or that city and going through a rough period of city-living will take this as a call to move elsewhere.

It’s not ending any time soon. And there might be rolling lockdowns going forward.

Why Tahoe? I'm on the NV side. Super crowded.

I've already got land on the Donner Summit to build a house. Starting this summer. It's a lot less crowded than Oakland.

I'm curious how you think this is going to play out. Obviously it seems like house and apartment prices in SF city will suffer, but do you think we'll see a jump in house prices on the peninsula and in the suburbs like east bay? We rent in east bay and I consider ourselves fortunate to have a yard and a pool. I can only imagine that it will become more desirable to live in suburbia than in the city, but it sure would be nice if a lot of people leave the bay area entirely to help the housing demand get down to a reasonable level, at which prices can start to get back to normal.

I worry about offices that open but still allow people to work from home. I think there will be pressures for people to go into the office, creating density issues, or miss out on promotions, etc.

Our offices have been "open" but absolutely no one is going there. I actually wonder when people will start going back because it doesn't really make much sense to go there if no one else is there.

The C level will instruct the managers to work in the office, then the brown nosers will follow, then everyone else will feel the need to ensure the brown nosers aren't given a leg up over them.

We've always been able to work remotely at our own discretion though.

>The C level will instruct the managers to work in the office, then the brown nosers will follow

there is a risk that covid may turn that into a natural selection process ...

I disagree. If my office was open I would love to go in only if no one else was there. The benefit I get from an office is having a place designated for work. No people = no distractions

Yeah, my office is in a commercial area next to my car dealership, Costco, grocery store, etc. so I go in once a week and get all my errands done at the same time - and the empty office is heavenly.

I started going to the office this week precisely because there is no one else.

This way I walk while commuting and it is safer than home, where there 4 more people.

If more people do it, I might reconsider it.

>it is safer than home, where there 4 more people.

Are you not going back home and spending a ton of time with those people in there?

Yes, but since the time in shared spaces is much shorter the probability of transmission is also much smaller, also for them, as ther is less density at home. I do not mean is is 100% safe, but comparatively safer.

If there were more people at the office, I would not do it, as I could be exposing my family.

It is all about reducing density and contact.

You are right, the individual propensity to go to the office is going to be highly sensitive to the number of people already going to the office. I believe this to have a steep s-curve shape; with little number of people at the office there is little incentive to show up. But after a critical threshold of office-goers, it will very rapidly be a career/productivity disadvantage to opt not showing up. Only thing that can change this curve is active office occupancy ceilings enforced by the company. Which kinda sucks, my employer might be good at writing web services, but how much do I trust them doing good epidemiology?

Our office is in the process of opening again and we have an arrangement that, at any time, half of the people come to the office and the other half stays at home. It's one person per room, basically. Some groups have organised themselves so that everyone comes in every other day. Some groups are naturally split into teams and the teams come in every other week. I've heard from another company where some people come in the morning and some in the afternoon.

This will happen just like “unlimited vacation” policies pressure actual vacation taken downwards. It doesn’t have to be an explicit management pressure either, simply the game theoretic implications put WFH people at a disadvantage as a function of people who don’t WFH increase. I believe this is how we will get the second and further waves as decision makers turn this into a Newton-Rhapson iteration to discover the sweet spot of the “office openness vs infection” function.

My employer has told us that no one will return until the 2nd week of September. Starting then a few employees in certain roles will return to the office. Over the following months the number of employees returning will gradually be increased but even then it will only be for a couple of days a week with a set schedule so that social distancing is maintained.

My company with 250 employees with offices in Europe and US announced last week that it aims to be 100% remote after this. Of course there will be a transition period, but i won't see myself in the office even after summer.

To be honest, i have worked remote for at least one year in the past, and i can safely conclude it was way better and more productive than the last 2 months mainly because it was by choice, as well as it was part of an overall remote culture (e.g. meeting regularly in cafes, doing fun activities as a group). However, even after this perfect year i personally couldn't do it no more.

People are probably making wrong assumptions of how nice the remote work might be due to the last 2 months because there was an overall excuse for their drop in productivity, or their lack of confidence (the world is collapsing how do you expect me to perform 100%?), and some extra time for family, netflix, spotify and social media due to the latter. IMO, in the wrong run the vast majority of people will definitely hate it and beg their companies to return to their offices.

With all the above i am not underestimating the health concerns. Of course companies should take minimum risks while the threat is still ongoing. In the positive scenario where it is eliminated companies should rethink their full remote policies (if they apply such) which were imposed during this weird period.

What's going to change Jan. 1st? Nothing. I read this as the companies basically saying WFH in perpetuity till the corona virus ends. Or maybe that's just common sense I'm reading into a press release where I shouldn't be. The only question now becomes: if governors can shut down all businesses, why would they allow anyone who can WFH to go into the office and endanger others? At this point, we are definitely not ready to reopen safely, but a reopening will happen soon (next few months). Why risk more lives than necessary? I bet we will see this gamble though and thousands will die unnecessarily. Based on the plans Clearly, companies like Tesla show that you cannot leave this in corporate hands. How can governors be so shortsighted and callous with so many lives?

It would be interesting to see how productive Google's employees are remotely vs. in-office.

I would guess goog doesn’t suffer that much. They have beyondcorp, and all meetings often have folks video chatting in anyway. Granted even a small reduction for a giant workforce is a lot of $ in absolute sense.

There's an expectation that productivity will be lower while WFH and higher-ups have said that's okay and expected. That being said... the people around me at least seem to have adapted fully to the new working conditions despite the rough start. I suspect this trend is similar across the company (and other companies).

Honesy question. How many of those peoe have kids? On my team/in my interactions with my company, the people with kids seem to struggle however the people without kids are thriving.

Yes, people around me with young kids are struggling. Those with older kids are mostly able to have them self-entertain for long enough stretches that it works for them, though it seems to depend on the kids.

I've also seen a couple of people without kids really struggling due to the lack of social interaction. For most this isn't an issue, or if it is, it's not a big deal, but for some, it's really hard to replace the in-office dynamic with video calls.

I find this to be a revealing time for people with children - as in, it's made clear to them that their children are an incredibly annoying burden which they only survived previously due to the system of offloading them to professionals.

Haha. I probably share your viewpoint about 90% of the time (I do not have kids), but people do not like to hear harsh statements like this.

Exactly, which is why it's so amazing that finally people don't have the option of merely protesting and attacking others over such observations. They're being forced to deal with the reality of their children, themselves.

My wife is a SAHM. Usually during summer vacation she does just fine handling the kids without their being offloaded to professionals.

The current situation is a lot tougher, though, since a lot of the things she'd normally do with the kids during the day are denied right now: the zoo is closed, museums are closed, playgrounds and parks are closed, gymnasiums are closed, no play dates with friends, no visits from family, etc.

I think it's unfair to try to draw your conclusion from the present situation.

That's a good point that we are experiencing exceptional circumstances. Many people can't handle being home this long on their own, children aside. However the zoo, playgrounds, museums, play dates and family are all systems for offloading the burden of one's children onto something external.

Or perhaps it's hard to both have a full time job and to watch children who need full time care? Similarly for elderly parents, or family members who are sick.

That's essentially the point I'm trying to make. People have only survived in prior times because they pay people to handle their children, in some form.

About half on my immediate team, though some lucky enough to have private space if needed.

It would be counter-productive to draw any conclusions from the current situation without taking in account family situations. I keep seeing studies that highlight "X% would like to go back to the office because they are not as productive WFH" -- followed by comments indicating that those folks should change and adapt.

I have 3 kids at home 24/7 that need regular attention, feeding, homework, etc. My productivity is down -- not because I am WFH, but because my entire family is as well. This is not a regular WFH situation and should not be analyzed as such.

I wish more companies could be this rational.

My partner’s team has been almost fully remote for two months, delivered all their work on time, but is expected to be back in the office June 1st because a higher-up wants an in-person meeting. There’s no other reason. It’s absurd.

I wonder how 10-50 person startups companies will handle the move back to working in the office, and how much more bullish they'll be than Big Tech

Work at a startup of about 70 - so just slightly larger than your ask. M n of 1 data is that we're out until Labor Day, for all of the same reasons as the big boys

This doesn't seem terribly surprising. If there's no vaccine anticipated for 2020 and office layout was never designed with social distancing in mind, it seems like those who can work remote should. Personally, I know I rather work in person with my teammates, but I also wouldn't want to risk my health or theirs (or any of our loved ones') over it. This feels like the responsible thing, to just allow the remainder of the year to be remote/from home.

I'm curious what this means long-term for other industries, though, and what a potential recovery looks like. From real estate to hospitality to services, I can't begin to comprehend the ripple effect that's currently taking shape.

I was asked to return to the office last week. Open office in Berlin :/. Everybody of the company will be back in 2-3 weeks.

I have some personal items I'd like to collect from the office. A board game or three, a bottle of ink, headphones... But beyond that, I'll likely work from home until there's a vaccine and I've been vaccinated.

Time will tell though.

https://archive.md/Gvsop

still from working from home here. our office is open but my side boss said for the group to stay home. Im sure he will let us go in June but probably wont pressure people so WFH will probably be extended.

I've been WFH since March 3rd due to a persistent cough I had from a cold I had the previous week. I really need to replace my recliner as my workspace...

I've purchased a desk and workstation... But I'm still typically on the couch with my laptop. Its difficult.

If you can setup a dedicated work area, even if it's temporary, do it and restrict work to that space. That means you only use that space for work, and don't use the rest of your home.

Your sofa is for relaxing, don't let work ruin a perfectly good sofa.

CCP Grey [^1] has an excellent video on this.

[^1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snAhsXyO3Ck (Video warning)

I literally cannot stress how important this is. It's all fun and games until you're working from your bed, and then find that you can not stop thinking in bed and then never fall asleep.

~ Signed, someone working from home full time for the past 6 years.

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