Well 60% of their workers chose to come back to the office. I guess not everybody likes working from home full time. Google can't really ignore that.
The new team I'm on is better, as we have a daily standup and more frequent interaction. But I still miss the face to face interaction, spontaneous brainstorming, and ability to just tap someone on a shoulder to ask for help, etc.
Remote works for some people, but it isn't working for me right now.
But I'd like to point out that working from home this last year (with forced kids at home, no chance to travel, services closed etc) was not the common experience people had in non-pandemic times.
Do tell, given what you know about the Google promotion process, how a choice to work remotely would translate to a decreased likelihood to be promoted (and, importantly, to an unfair degree)?
The entire system is a scam and built specifically to keep you at google and drinking the kool aid
I worked at Google for four years. I've seen many people I know basically "play it safe" by making conservative decisions in order to minimize the likelihood of hurting one's promo chances. Despite all the talk about this, nobody really knows for sure what will affect their promo. For example, people will stay on a team they hate rather than risk "resetting the promo clock". There is also a general understanding that being outside the Bay Area hurts your career growth.
Given these tendencies and the fact that people who work remotely often find themselves more isolated than their in-office colleagues, I fully expect that people will hesitate to adopt remote work if they're not in the majority.
Got it. So when it was asked, "how many know they're on the chopping block if they work remotely" and it was redefined to ask "how many know their chances for promotion might be affected by working remotely?"... The answer is "almost everyone".
Many people will happily choose to work remotely, even if it makes promotion harder, because that's a good trade-off for them. Exactly like people will happily work from other offices.
So what's the problem?
That said, I know many people who really miss being in the office, including many former colleagues at Google. Some of them have kids, while others need the social aspect of in office culture. I really believe that at least half the company wants to work from an office.
That makes me wonder what happens with the other half. Having part of a team work remotely isn't ideal for those people - they end up being left out of things. On the other hand, it doesn't really make sense to just forget everything we've learned from the last year of remote work and force a big percentage o people back to a situation where they're less productive.
I suspect though that the latter is exactly what will happen to some extent based on Google's own statement, which is a shame. But we all have to give things up for work and many Googlers would be very reluctant to leave.
Who takes care of the kids while they’re at the office though?
(Also possible that the offices that were opened were more heavy on hardware / "lab" roles, so while maybe it was officially "voluntary", those people effectively had to choose between coming back to the office or doing fake / busy work at home.)
Having worked from the Zurich office myself previously, most people are within walking/biking/a 5 minute train ride to the office, so commute concerns that we have in the US aren't relevant.
Similarly, most people in those locations live in apartments or condos and so may not have a space to make a home office. Returning to the office to make use of the (superior) workspace in the office. I can say that for example on my team, around half of my coworkers (whose offices are open) are consistently in the office.