The individual employee is not going to be a reliable indicator for any of these questions.
By the same logic implied here, we cannot trust senior management to know what they're doing.
PS - Also Google's measures of productivity are terrible, that's why they keep starting/killing new projects ever other week, and killed their golden goose in their so-called "20-percent rule."
I dunno, seems like they are doing ok at their jobs....
America is one of the best countries in the world, therefore its leadership has to be smart and competent.
They didn’t build the ship, they’re just passengers.
Hence why most companies fall out of the S&P 500 as quickly as they rise. If you think Google is going to stay on top forever you’re in for a rude awakening.
I can think of no product at google that is not overshadowed by their policy of non-support. The culture that leads to their innovation also informs trust. If there is any such thing as "too innovative" then google is it.
This is why Azure is doing so much better than google in cloud computing despite the fact that google invented modern cloud computing. People trust Microsoft to support their products.
And even among those who are genuinely trying to see that the business does well for years to come, rather than the next three months and then who cares, even among the ones of them who are genuinely decent at managing a product, far too few understand the positive relationship between how you treat your employees and what you get out of them.
Because we've spent decades in this country being sold the idea that good management means forcing workers to work more hours, under tighter control, because "workers" are stupid, lazy, and/or malicious, and it is "managers" who really know how to do things right, by the very definition of their jobs.
This is factually untrue. The only difference is Google is much larger, making it harder to launch new products.
The reality is that neither is probably a WFH issue as a first-order effect.
The interests of engineers are often extremely detached from whether development is cost effective and maintainable by others.
The part that's stupid is everyone, even the ones who know better, pretending a bunch of bad statistics and such aren't bad, but if the suits in the room are nodding along you damn well better not point that out. People succeeding in the management track either actually are bad at understanding these things, or (plenty often) do understand but also know to STFU about it.
I don't think engineers are the only rational ones, but I think the rational ones in management have noticed that their numbers being meaningful or correct only rarely matters for getting a "yes" or a promotion, so have responded... rationally, since getting useful figures and proving that they're useful is both 1) usually a lot more work, and 2) often not even practically possible.
This is especially true in large corporations, where upper management is very insulated from the realities of line-level work. It is also especially true in most publicly-traded corporations, where upper management is almost invariably going to care more about the trendline in the company's stock price than in their actual productivity, or even in the well-being of their workers.
And management can? Please, tell me how. Give me metrics and methods for measurement that can effectively capture productivity. What's the KPI for "strong corporate culture" or "innovation"?
Because if we can't rely on individual experiences, then clearly the only other option is systemic measurements, so please, tell me how!
Also, not all measurements should be shared. Let’s say that they have data showing that new hire productivity and skill growth is much lower when senior engineers are WFH. They’re not going to share that data when forcing senior engineers to be in the office, since it could foment resentment of junior staff.
So then why shouldn't we trust individual experiences? What's the evidence that those reports are not reliable while management perceptions are if this stuff isn't measurable?
> Let’s say that they have data showing that new hire productivity and skill growth is much lower when senior engineers are WFH. They’re not going to share that data when forcing senior engineers to be in the office, since it could foment resentment of junior staff.
They're already fomenting resentment by making a decision to force people back to work without any evidence to justify it.
That's somehow better?
BTW, I'm not saying they're wrong! They might be completely right. But to disregard individual experience while trusting management is measuring the right things is, frankly, pretty naive. The reality is management is as much about personal beliefs, gut instinct, and good ol' fashion tradition as anything else.
I suspect it's far more likely that management at Google simply doesn't like the idea of fully remote employees, not based on any specific data points, but simply because that's their preference. But assuming that's true, it's better to simply admit that then to make pseudo-scientific arguments to justify those preexisting beliefs.
There's another term for that: Confirmation bias.
That's fine, but let's not pretend your opinion is any more valid than anyone else's, including the individual employees who feel differently.
The reality is no one, here, is actually basing their opinion on data. Absent that this is basically faith. Which is great 'cuz then we can all just agree to disagree. ;)
I like this question. Let’s say that we can create a list of 10 quantitative measures of the story, all binary and all comparative, e.g. which has the best pacing? which makes the best use of supporting characters? Now we can total up the answers and produce a number, e.g. Macbeth is better than the Da Vinci Code in 30% of our measures.
You could repeat this process pair-wise with lots of books and produce a ranking.
Positive or negative?
https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-...
Some ammunition for the opposition: this HBR article indicates that companies who managed the transition to remote work the best increased their productivity during the pandemic. So, a question I'd want to ask if my hypothetical boss said "back to the office everybody!" would be why we hadn't been able to adapt as well as the best of our competitors, and why we didn't want to learn from them and get that productivity boost.
https://hbr.org/2020/12/the-pandemic-is-widening-a-corporate...