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Comment by notdonspaulding | Hacker News Reader

What people say they will do when there's no cost associated with an action and what people will actually do once a cost IS associated with the same action are frequently 2 different things.

Bob Lutz, in his self-aggrandizing book "Gutz", describes the initial phase of an automobile design project where a survey is conducted asking respondents whether they would prefer a vehicle with heated cupholders. It turned out the percentage of people who responded positively was significantly higher than the percentage of people who ultimately chose to pay for the option in actual sales.

I wonder if a similar effect will be seen regarding people returning to work.

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There was a blog post posted here recently from someone who saw Google as a "family" and drank a lot of koolaid, as well as stories of high levels of entitlement. I wonder if there's a similar phenomenon going on where people assume that companies pampering them is a given and that they can get anything they want by complaining enough.

What they might find instead is the shock that "grass is greener on the other side" was a lie all along.

What grass though? This subset of employees seem to value working remotely above free food or massages or whatever other in-office perks.

Work-from-home as a perk has a negative cost, so it's not crazy to think that companies might start offering it.

>Work-from-home as a perk has a negative cost

Negative cost but also negative revenue / productivity loss if not done properly.

Most data appears to show the hybrid model is the best for productivity. WFH several days a week, enabling focus and limiting distractions. Work from the office a couple days a week to enable coordination, connection, innovation, and alignment.

This forced experiment in 100% WFH was clearly bad for productivity. The reason tech companies provided so many perks in the past wasn't simply as a recruitment technique. A lot of it was to create an environment where workers worked longer hours and thus the firm got more productivity out of each worker. The cost-benefit analysis clearly supported that before. A caterer's salary is far lower than an engineer's.

> This forced experiment in 100% WFH was clearly bad for productivity.

Could you link to some data that demonstrates that?

> A lot of it was to create an environment where workers worked longer hours and thus the firm got more productivity out of each worker.

"longer hours" "more productivity" is obviously false for the extremes. It is unclear what is the threshold when a programmer starts to introduce more issues than they fix.

It is hard to measure productivity for a programmer (e.g., what might be productive short-term may be counter-productive long-term).

> Most data appears to show the hybrid model is the best for productivity.

Can we see the data?

> Work from the office a couple days a week to enable coordination, connection, innovation, and alignment.

I see you are fully buzzword enabled.

> This forced experiment in 100% WFH was clearly bad for productivity.

"Clearly"?

Can you back up your dramatic claims with evidence?

When I worked at Google, it was so noisy that I did most of my work from home anyway, but showed up for a few hours a day because I had to.

> A lot of it was to create an environment where workers worked longer hours and thus the firm got more productivity out of each worker

Also known as: working for free

As an ISP engineer, I can tell you my company has numbers and figures that we are much more productive in networking, applications teams and development, and a handful of other teams across the board by working remotely. Been selling off officespace all last year and continuing to do so. We do work more working from home. And all that said, they know full well what teams should be back in the office and those of us who could feasibly work permanently from home.

In this case, by "grass" I mean the combination of which subset of employers pay comparably to google, plus allow unrestricted WFH, plus have similar levels of infrastructure quality (such that your day to day doesn't involve dealing with broken infra or some such), number of meetings, levels of autonomy, etc.

I'm sure that there is a subset of jobs that ticks all those boxes, but what I don't believe is that they're in such abundance that one can simply quit google and stumble into one by simply waving around their xoogler status.

More likely than not, people following through w/ quitting will realize that work satisfaction does not solely depend on a single dimension (WFH-ness)

How are these employees "pampered"? They found they enjoy working from home, so they prefer to keep doing that, and if Google doesn't oblige them, they'll start shopping among the many companies that currently do. The free market at work.

According to the blog post I mentioned, before WFH, Google apparently used to go out of its way to literally pamper engineers, with things like fancy cafeteria offerings, laundry services, massages, etc. I think it's important to keep in mind that when some people's complaints are on the level of "ugh, sushi again?", that their levels of entitlement may be a bit uncalibrated from the reality of how other companies treat employees.

The pseudo-moral judgement on Google's relations with its employees is out of place.

Google provides certain benefits to its employees, not out of the kindness of its heart or out of moral consideration, but because business analysis has determined it's in Google's own benefit to do so. To make itself more attractive, build up a prestigious brand as an employer, keep people working longer hours, etc.

The moment they determine it's no longer in their interest to provide you with these benefits - they'll fire you.

So let's stop pretending one party or the other here is acting on some moral basis. This is just business.

For the record, I didn't mean to imply any sort of moral judgment about Google itself, I was merely relating facts about Google perks and reports of how some employees reacted to them. The point, in fact, is mostly about the employees, who have often been characterized as out-of-touch with the workings of the world outside Google.

Also, if you are google employee who already moved away from the bay area, it may actually be easier to switch jobs (to a full remote option) than it is to move back to the bay area on September 1.

Many of the employees that are angry have already left, and have been working remote for 6+ months. The hard part of moving is already done. If anything, staying with google would be the more difficult choice since they need to move back!

While technically correct, I think you are dramatically overestimating the difficulty ex-googlers have in getting a new job.

A new job that carries same prestige and benefits?

Depends on how highly they value WFH. Another job might have higher "benefits". It's all relative to the persons desires.

I think you're greatly overestimating the prestige of working at Google, or the value of said prestige.

If you know how to leverage your experience you can literally walk in as the CTO of most small startups if you are an ex-googler and don't act like a drone.

CTO of most small startups don't get paid as well as a typical moderately experienced Google engineer. And the job is a lot harder and higher stakes (which is something that some people prefer and others do not).

The top tier of these get paid _higher_ than googlers

As someone who has worked at multiple FAANG companies, I think that is a total exaggeration. What on earth does being Engineer #56112 at Google have to do with someone's ability to be a CTO? We’re talking entirely different skill sets. What does "don't act like a drone" mean? Show me one start-up that will simply let me "walk in as the CTO". Come on!

Have you ever tested your think?

People say I think, when they really mean I feel.

And how you feel has nothing to do with how others feel.

There are startups out there that see you and feel there will be great success in hiring you in a CTO role.

They don’t know that you feel like Engineer #56112. They just see a slice of Google that they can inject into their company.

Go test your think

Both at the same time, presumably if they're willing to leave they've been there long enough to cash in said prestige somewhere else

I think that's true for sure. In fact, I know of more workplaces where when doing the hiring, previous experience with Google is a negative rather than positive, as previous ex-Google employees have introduced more problems than solutions, together with strongly holding a "better than you" attitude towards others.

I wonder if ex-googler is not more prestigious than "googler" actually

There is the prestige & benefit of having worked for a FAANG, which, once attained, stays on one's resumé forever, so maybe for some people, tradeoffs that are worth it to attain such a job may no longer be worth it to remain in that job after a few years.

Yeah I think the play is to work for FANG for 1-2 years and then skedaddle really no reason to stay not like they're going to promote anyone to something meaningful unless you are truly a superstar.

If I had a dollar each time someone said they wanted to leave badly only to be still in the same company/position 1 or 2 years later....

The question is always why someone is not perfectly happy with a workplace, and what alternatives they have available.

You may work in a large bureaucratic corporation, want to work somewhere more dynamic, but you also have adjusted to the large corp salary.

You may work at a cool startup, but wish for more time for your family, however the jobs offering a better work life balance are uninspiring.

Add to that it takes effort to leave, and less effort to stay, and you have a lot of people "choosing" to stay.

Yes, employers have inertia on their side. But for precisely that reason, sometimes mild irritants end up having disproportionate effects in getting people to leave in a "The Elves Leave Middle Earth" moment.

I said this about Google. And I left. No $ for you, at least for this case.

Many, perhaps most, people have some degree of gripe-age with their jobs. Many also have enough experience to realize that the grass isn't always greener and the devil you know may be preferable.

GOOG folks, FB is recruiting stressing on "remote". Call a recruiter today!

But then you’d have to work for Facebook… cringe

Quality of life improvement when you work remote is several fold higher. You have to experience it. I've been working remote (consulting) for about 4 years now. My wife has done it about 1/2 her career. We live in sunny SoCal (expensive, but very tolerable when you don't have to get on the freeways).

Take care of No. 1 first. That is you. GOOG folks, please don't cringe at FB. There is no difference.

Pretty much everyone has experienced what WFH is like a year plus into the pandemic. Those of us who want to go back to the office have experienced WFH, and our quality of life is lower with WFH. It's no longer true that people who say they don't like WFH would change their mind if only they'd experienced it.

Nobody has been experiencing normal remote work during the pandemic.

Normal remote work lets you go out and do fun stuff with friends after hours (which you have more of with no commute), spend more time with your kids (who have been at school for most of the day), or even explore other cities or countries (if you have that kind of remote arrangement).

All the pandemic has shown us is basically all knowledge work can be done remotely, and most sales work too.

> Normal remote work lets you go out and do fun stuff with friends after hours (which you have more of with no commute), spend more time with your kids (who have been at school for most of the day), or even explore other cities or countries (if you have that kind of remote arrangement).

Some people enjoy socializing at work.

> All the pandemic has shown us is basically all knowledge work can be done remotely, and most sales work too.

For sales, can be done, but can it win over the face to face sales?

>Some people enjoy socializing at work.

I do. I have small children, don't have a lot of time in the evenings, so work is my main social meeting place (granted, there are weekends with friends, but weekdays are much harder).

During the day, I want to talk to real, physical people, have lunch or coffee with them (probably a cultural thing), and talk about things. I sorely miss it.

While I understand that some people can cope with skyping people all day long 5 days a week and have no physical interactions, I find it incredibly wearing in the long run, and am not sure that most people can. It's a bit like comparing facebook and going to a cafe with friends : sure, both allow social interactions, but the quality of said interactions is vastly different with the remote ones fundamentally lacking.

I'd happily have a day of wfh per week though - perfect for uninterrupted, focused work!

I'm really tired of these no true Scotsman arguments from WFH evangelists.

"Everyone would like WFH if they'd truly experienced it the 'correct' way! Anyone who says they don't like it just hasn't done it properly!"

Please just accept that not everyone is exactly like you. Plenty of people really do enjoy the in-person office environment more.

And they are really tired by the "see, people do terribly at home, this proves it doesn't work" from the anti-WFH crowd, and being pushed out of something that works for them with such arguments. (Which is the reverse of your argument: please accept that for some people WFH works better and they really want to keep that option)

I am in the "will return to the office regularly as soon as I can" crowd, but I don't think the "no true Scotsman" is a fair accusation here. The pandemic situation is different and not a good indicator, and a good chunk of the problems people have are obviously connected to that.

100% agree. After 3 month of WFH, I started coming in to the empty building. I was the only one here, but it is so much easier to get work done when I'm not at home.

Most of my co-workers feel the opposite from me, but my home is a sea of distractions that I'd rather be doing than sitting at a computer working (and I live alone, so no kids or spouse at home). Instead I could be playing piano, practicing violin, writing music, taking photos, developing film, or 100 other things. When I'm at work, I work (mostly).

i've been doing remote consulting for over 10 years and i wouldn't go back to an office even if a company offered me doubled what i earn.

no traffic in the morning, being able to go for walks in the middle of the day, home cooked meals every day, no alarms in the morning (biggest plus imo).

Personal opinion: Google carefully treads the gray lines of legality and morals/ethics. Facebook leadership, on the other hand, decided a long time ago that they care about legality only. They seem very proud of that decision, too.

Google might still have a better reputation in certain circles but it is unclear what company is actually worse for the world at this time (btw, if you have a link where somebody tried to actually quantify it, it would be an interesting read).

Getting ~11 hours of my life back from commutes a week alone is worth it. That's almost a full day! (assuming 16h wake cycles)

Would i prefer in-office if i didn't have to commute? Maybe. The downsides are just not worth the upsides, though. To me.

I have a nice ~20min (4-5mi) bike ride to/from work in the SF East Bay, usually good weather. Found a route with bike lines and moderate traffic so its pretty nice. I'm looking forward to going back to the office more.

I mean you could go for an even nicer bike ride every day if you were WFH and can choose to cycle anywhere you fancy.

...just a thought :)

I tried that. I'm not motivated enough. Totally my problem but the structure of communting was really helpful in getting me to do it everyday.

Also, I live 300ft up in the Oakland hills so going out and back in the morning to WFH means I have to climb back up or jut ride in the hills which involves more climbing. Going to work is downhill!

> Take care of No. 1 first.

what does this mean exactly? work at any terrible company that does terrible things, as long as the pay is good?

Yes.

... when you already work for Google?

If we’re making that comparison, absolutely. Both are in the ads business, but I get actual utility from one company’s products and the other company’s products make me feel worse at the end of the day.

I realize that many people love social media and derive happiness from FB, but it’s just not the case for me and the main reason I couldn’t work there.

> If we’re making that comparison, absolutely. Both are in the ads business, but I get actual utility from one company’s products and the other company’s products make me feel worse at the end of the day.

I wish I could know which company is which by your comment, but I can't, any could be in any place here.

It's pretty clear that Google is the one with useful and revolutionary products (Android, Maps, Earth, YouTube, Gmail, Google Pay) while Facebook is basically only useful for groups nowadays or for Instagram (is that really useful?) and WhatsApp (which they bought and introduced stories on. Wohoo. Innovative.)

It's not that clear for me. Out of your examples, only Gmail and Google Pay are actually created by Google (or by people working at Google at the time of creation), the rest are acquisitions.

And your use case for Facebook et al is obviously different than how many others see it. Being the first truly wordwide social network has to count for something, even though we're not sure it was a good idea in the first place. The world is big and people use/like different things, and it's all relative in the end.

Hence wfhbata's comment without any naming, can be seen from both perspectives.

We're talking about Google employees here. Squint your eyes and they look like the same company.

Google gave us maps, Gmail, Google, android...

Facebook is probably a net negative for the whole world. If fb would evaporate tomorrow no one would care.

Old Google gave us Google, Gmail - new Google has been continually making it worse and/or more evil. Maps and Android are probably a bit more of a mix though.

Regardless i'm not questing what Google _was_. I'm commenting on what Google _is_.

Let me know when google undermines American democracy, enables a genocide in Myanmar, or casually starts kicking human rights activists off its products.

Or by “squint” do you mean “close?”

Google has provided a platform that for years benefited off of extremists and only recently started taking action against it.

It provided multiple platforms that, like Facebook, optimized user clicks in ways that ended up causing significant harm. Radicalizing extremists and pushing racism, homophobia, misinformation, etc.

One may be objectively worse than the other, but lets not pretend that Google conveniently forgot "Do no evil" until it was notified of it's own actions by the public. Only with its back against the wall did it recognize the problem.

"Why choose the lesser evil?"

No FANG company has good work culture or good work/life balance anymore, and all are entangled in some morally questionable project or another. Go work for a startup.

Or for one of the tens of thousands of non-faang/non-startup businesses out there paying good money with actual work/life balance.

As a side note, I personally find it hilarious to associate work/life balance with a startup.

If you're a FANG-caliber candidate, the pool of startups you can work for have good work/life balance, high pay, and are pretty awesome. In general though you are of course right.

Are startups any better? From what I have seen it's, "work for low wages in a high stress environment, and pray we go public in 5 years".

Top tier yes, mid to low tier no

..or government work.

I get to do meaningful work, and my employer REALLY cares about me (the amount of training we get offered is amazing). UK so YMMV.

Very true. I worked for the DoD for a few years and it's definitely a good job to e.g. settle down and have a family and work for 50 years at with good job security, benefits, etc.

I moved too from DoD to FANG, and I’m not sure how you can say this with a straight face. Nothing FANG does on its worst day is comparable to what DoD does on its best day.

That’s not to say the DoD is inherently evil from the bottom up. It’s just that the things activists love to hate about FANG (potentially contributing to border control, selling technologies to foreign governments, data collection), the DoD does ten times over.

Yeah that's very true for a large portion of the DoD. In my case I was doing theoretical research that was all getting published and pushing the AI field forward. People doing applied research get their stuff used for all sorts of unsavory stuff though.

I left GOOG a year ago to join MSFT, both have excellent work-life balance.

I also spent 5 years at a well known startup that went public - I think I averaged nearly 12 hours a day over the 5 years there.

In my experience and from a lot of people I talk to, work-life balance is much better at a large Corp than a startup.

Ah yes, remote within 100 miles of a Facebook hub. Which are... NYC and SF. Not exactly "remote" by my definition if you only have the option to live in the suburbs of a major metro area.

My situtation is slightly different than the Google one, but I've already resolved if my employer makes me come back into the office with a full-time commute, I'm going to start looking for a different job right away.

I think a lot of employees are in this situation but aren't going to say this because they don't want to lose their job or have it held against them and be managed out of the company before they're told they need to come into the office.

Same, there are plenty of competitive offers, and if I cannot upgrade my lifestyle (no commute, house instead of studio, etc) with my current employer, so be it.

I've learned to be a fan of the expression, "Put your money where your mouth is" for exactly that reason (also, "follow the money" for similar reasons).

I'd wager there are two populations. There are people who prefer WFH but didn't move. And there are people who moved. I can't return to the office. It is too late. I moved to be closer to my family. The job doesn't outweigh that. If I can't work remotely, I'm leaving in September. My boss and my director both know this.

I really want a heated cupholder now - how did I never hear for this before. This is a gamechanger.

Should have tried chilled cupholders.

Funny you say that - my Audi has both.

Like couldn’t decide which one to implement, so they made both.

My car put the cupholders in front of the center console air vents, so they are heated in winter, and cooled in summer. But any spills end up on the radio/nav.

> the percentage of people who responded positively was significantly higher than the percentage of people who ultimately chose to pay for the option in actual sales

I'm guessing it's (at least partially) because they weren't offered a'la carte, but instead bundled with the "premium" interior package only offered in the most expensive trim.

This bundling is the only way I've ever gotten the option of heated/chilled cupholders (which are awesome, by the way).

Google workers probably do have other options. Maybe not as financially lucritive but they should be able to find work.

I have had people threaten to quit as we transition back to the office. These are tier 1 support people. I dont expect Ill have any no-call no-shows monday though.

We also have people that have straight up MOVED to other cities (or in one case, refused to move to our city despite it being a condition of employment).

I'm curious how those will play out.

"What people say they will do when there's no cost associated with an action and what people will actually do once a cost IS associated with the same action are frequently 2 different things."

This statement makes it sound like you think that Google employees are unable to attach a cost to leaving the company until they actually commit the act. Am I misunderstanding? Because that's obviously not true.

Probably. Its the same as people saying they'll move to Canada if so and so becomes president. A few people do, but the vast majority don't.

I love the short term thinking here.

They won't immediately abandon ship once we force them back to the salt mines, so there's no problem.

Even if they come back if the resent the company for economically forcing them back that isn't a good situation for morale or productivity or retention.

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