Senior Google exec opposes remote work, moves to New Zealand to work remotely | Hacker News Reader

Senior Google exec opposes remote work, moves to New Zealand to work remotely

businessinsider.com

354 pointsthrowawaysea233 comments

The big question here is how Senior Google executive Urs Hölzle managed to get a "remote work visa" from the government of New Zealand. It reminds me of the "special treatment" that Peter Thiel got, where he got New Zealand citizenship after spending only 12 days in New Zealand [1].

It is almost non-existent in the western world to be able to get a remote-work visa (minus Croatia and Czech Republic--both countries are part of the European Union and therefore become "westernized" quickly after accession).

Yes, you can technically get _self-employment_, non-remote work visas in many European Union countries. But, the point and intent of such visas is that you contribute to their economy, assimilate, learn the local language, and eventually become a functioning contributing citizen in their society.

The hypocrisy of the situation around remote work makes me angry, as I am disabled and I require remote work as an accommodation. I have 2 rare immune-mediated neurological diseases affecting my peripheral nervous system, plus type 1 diabetes (autoimmune and insulin-dependent).

I should also point out something else unfair. I am a dual US|EU (Croatian) citizen who works part-time remotely as a contractor for a US-based company in Croatia, while studying for her masters degree in electrical engineering full time. Because I am an EU citizen, I can work in 30+ countries remotely, outside of the United States, while essentially getting paid more (compared to the locals and most other European Union citizens) for just having US citizenship and related credentials. I basically live like a queen in Croatia.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/29/new-zealand-ga...

That's a good question. However, as a NZer, I think it's a pretty good deal for NZ to admit someone like Hölzle even if he only stays here for a year. For sure he will contribute to the economy by spending significant amounts (we have a sales tax he can't evade), and we should be able to collect income tax too. It's also good for our tech industry to have people like him around.

He may not need a visa, if he is getting citizenship through investment [1].

[1] https://www.newzealand-migration.co.nz/dual-citizenship-serv...

Thank you for the information.

Citizenship by investment (aka golden visas) invite corruption. The European Union has been trying to eliminate these sorts of visas for obvious reasons.

If you want to see a dedicated scam artist who will scam you out of 6 figures to “help” you get a citizenship by investment, check out Nomad Capitalist YouTube channel.

Link to SCAMMER YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/c/nomadcapitalist

How does it invite corruption if it's a legitimate government sponsored pathway? I'm sure NZers are happy to get a piece of rich migrants wealth vs. their money staying in offshore havens

The EU did some pretty thorough research on this.

Link to page: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document.html?re...

Citizenship by investment (CBI) and residency by investment (RBI) schemes in the EU

This study analyses the state of play and issues surrounding citizenship and residency by investment schemes (so-called ‘golden passports’ and ‘golden visas’) in the EU. It looks at the economic social and political impacts of such schemes and examines the risks they carry in respect of corruption, money laundering and tax evasion.

Link to PDF document: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2018/6271...

Are you familiar with Vancouver, BC, Canada?

There is a perception here that housing prices are constantly propped up and inflated because of rich migrants. Or simply because rich people are parking money in Vancouver real estate.

This has been going on since the 1990s.

In the short term people who own property and can benefit from the influx of money are happy. Over time it creates huge resentment from those who don’t see an opportunity to be able to afford owning. This resentment is even found among those earlier rich migrants who are now being priced out by migrants with more money.

I’m sure there is similar sentiment in San Francisco and other places where tech workers have caused prices to increase.

If this is limited in some way, then maybe the locals will be happy to see some additional wealth coming in.

SF has been unaffordable long before the last two or three tech booms, and it's because of limited supply. People just don't go back to read the headlines from the 70s about how expensive it was.

A quick search reveals an article [1] documenting some of the zoning issues that seem to have started in the 1870s.

It mentions many different discriminatory zoning practices throughout the history of the city, and it does show an article from 1978 where people started to voice concerns over pricing.

Thanks for pointing out the longer timeline on affordability!

[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/90242388/the-bad-design-that-cre...

You are being downvoted because you did not provide any proof he is a scammer, nor a definition of what you mean by this strong claim. Citizen by investment costs from 150k (montenegro?) to 250k-350k (st kitts, turkey, etc) to 600k-2.5 million USD (USA?), and typically costs 30% less if you're willing to simply pay the money and be done with it, or the undiscounted price if you'd like to genuinely invest (normally in assets that are government-approved and looks scammy/risky to me).

My point with the above, is that it's a high ticket item, and can be massively impactful for the buyer. It's normal when people spend a few hundred grand for those involved in the process to take a high commission. Even a 5% commission could be 15k. Is he scamming people for more? This would be kinda strange because the costs of these programs are very much public. Is he pretending he can get you a citizenship for cheaper and then pocketing your money, knowing you won't go to law enforcement because you intended your money to go towards corruption of a government official?

Please provide evidence.

As an aside, has anyone here purchased a citizenship through investment and not lost money? I'm very curious.

Thank you for the insight--which I missed.

Here is a review site for Nomad Capitalist detailing his scam methods (which has "positive" counterreviews--especially towards the top): https://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/nomadcapitalist.com (Control/Command + F = "Just don't do it" to find the gist of his scheme)

Here is a whole website calling out Nomad Capitalist being a scam: https://nomadcapitalistscam.com/

Here is a Reddit page of somebody who was scammed by Nomad Capitalist: https://www.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/comments/ita1i4/a_disg...

Here is another Reddit page where people are skeptical of Nomad Capitalist: https://www.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/comments/6wl962/is_and...

People on these pages have advised instead to get both accountants and lawyers on both sides (USA and country abroad) and looking into stuff yourself, instead of relying on businesses such as Nomad Capitalist and others. For the lawyer side, especially abroad, you will want both a business and immigration lawyer helping you out. The place to go for that is the US/Canada/Australia/UK/Ireland/etc. embassy to your target country's website, and get those lawyer lists. Obviously the list is not an endorsement of the lawyers, and lawyers can be sketchy. It is important to look for red flags such as painting an overly perfect picture of themselves, or positive counter-reviews (to negative reviews). My lawyer (for Croatian citizenship) was also head of an international commerce association, and therefore it meant that he probably had to deal with complicated laws, had to get along with people, and had to get things done.

I hope this helps.

None of these links have actual evidence that NC is a scam. They are all pretty much “he charges a lot of money for consulting fees and I don’t want to spend a lot of money.”

Typical for Reddit.

Probably should multiply by a googol for a fair price.

//Because I am an EU citizen, I can work in 30+ countries remotely, outside of the United States,

How does this work, given that European countries speak different languages?

Most educated Europeans speak at least English. Many speak three languages.

English

First and foremost, I speak Croatian pretty well, which is a second language for me. I am working on French at the moment, and that is what I will be focused on for the next 1.5 years. After that, I will go on to learn German. But, a lot of people speak English in the European Union.

I also use nifty and unique tools like this, which helps me learn languages in my sleep (I use it for engineering coursework too!): https://github.com/Frederik-D-Weber/cosleep

I also wrote a script that creates 10,000 Anki flashcards: with the English (10,000 most commonly used words in English) and the corresponding Foreign word, IPA pronunciation (English and Foreign word), Text-to-Speech audio (for both the English and Foreign word), and a GIF image corresponding to each flashcard.

With respect to becoming conversational, this is the best tool: https://ai.glossika.com/

This is a good place to figure out good learning methods: https://forum.language-learners.org/

I should point out that you never need to go abroad to learn a foreign language. You can just find the cheapest person on italki who is a native speaker of your target language, and have a session with them, where you only speak words in the target language. That is the best way to learn.

But, this is the ultimate guide for learning a language. Basically, from there, it is a matter of finding inputs/outputs (materials to learn from) to work with in the foreign language: https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/lals/resources/paul-nations-resources...

Awesome learning resources, Thank you!

Are you learning French/German for the sake of employability?

Or you find that good English all that's required for most EU remote jobs?

Good English is all that is required for most EU remote jobs.

I am learning French and German for assimilation reasons. I may move somewhere else, eventually. To keep this short, I have complex healthcare needs, and the countries that can provide me the healthcare I need speak primarily French or German.

Good luck in getting the Healthcare you need.

Ah crap - and it's exactly those French and German speaking countries that generally don't speak great (or like at all) English.

As the other commenter already said "Puno uspeha!"

Hvala :-)

> I also use nifty and unique tools like this, which helps me learn languages in my sleep (I use it for engineering coursework too!): https://github.com/Frederik-D-Weber/cosleep

o.O Does tbis work?

Yes. Look up Targeted Memory Reactivation on PUBMED: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=targeted+memory+reacti...

This is a form of closed-loop TMR, which is far more efficient.

That's a wow. Are there similar devices which can be just bought, as opposed to fiddling with hardware (which is not for everybody, also not for me)?

I basically have it set up to where you basically just start up your Ubuntu Laptop, startup the software, and then plug in the leads for your EEG cap (which are labelled--both on the wires of the EEG cap and the 3D printed case) into the case. After that, you just connect the case (the "device") to the Ubuntu laptop and then go to sleep.

See this case: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2085981

But to your question: no, unfortunately. The guides on it are not the friendliest, either. I have been thinking about writing a guide, as I have a unique ability for breaking down complex concepts.

The compiling of the software (not required--however it is useful and you will want to do this versus using a USB stick or the pre-compiled software [which also requires special steps for use] available on the GitHub page) and the wiring are the trickiest parts.

The wiring can take a couple of nights to learn, even with experience.

Wow, how does cosleep device work (technically)? It plays predefined audio files based on your brain wave activity during sleep?

Yep. It makes several copies of the original text-to-speech file, with background noise of different frequencies.

Basically, it plays the intended file (of a certain word and a particular frequency) to get your brain in sync to encode the information effectively and efficiently to your memory. Hence, it is closed-loop.

But, it is a huge pain to compile the repo and to get working (you can use the USB version with the Ubuntu image but it can be finicky). I probably spent 80 hours trying to get it to compile and probably reinstalled Ubuntu 30+ times to get working. Eventually I was successful.

I now have a backup of the Ubuntu image thanks to Acronis True Image and I also use an NAS server.

If you email me (check my profile) I can help you with getting this all set up. I would get it to compile first before purchasing OpenBCI equipment.

Speaking the local language isn't a legal requirement.

A handful of countries allow remote work on tourist visas - Canada, UK. The vast majority of countries including the US implicitly or explicitly prohibit any work on tourist visas.

It's an open secret in the digital nomading community. Many are not working legally or paying taxes to the host country.

I thought there was a lot of gray area in there, depending on the country. If you go to a conference or a meeting in some countries, for example, you are obviously "working" while on that visa, arguably remote, and it's often the case that is done on a "tourist" visa for many countries. I thought this was the case for most EU, and it's the case for some South American countries.

Some countries obviously don't allow that - I recall I needed an invitation for China and South Africa, for example for some conferences, although I think they were still tourist visas.

You will get questionned heavily by US customs if you travel "too much" to U.S. even for conferences (you better have proofs for these as well). It is accepted for a conference because duration is short. But they get highly suspicious for longer periods.

What's the good argument behind preventing remote-work visas? I mean, it sounds like the best of all worlds from a country's perspective - someone from another country is paying this person, but that person lives here, and they spend their money here? That's a net inflow, what's not to like?

Think of human labor as a natural resource. If the employer is overseas, you're selling the raw resource. You'd rather make some goods out of the resource and sell that instead.

It's not as though most countries have a local Google / Facebook / etc clone, so they can't "make the goods" domestically, there's no "means of production" in-country.

To me, that just means that an equivalent local worker is worth more than the remote worker, but the remote worker would still be a net inflow regardless, as the parent comment said.

You as the country the prospective remote worker could be visiting aren't the owner of the human labor though. The human labor and employer are both overseas and you have the option of getting one to visit you and spend their money in your land.

Everything about the scenario exactly mirrors tourism as far as I can see, and countries generally like rich tourists visiting.

> argument behind preventing remote-work visas

A remote employer may not pay all the local taxes and contributions. In particular, in EU a part of the social security contributions is usually paid by the employer, not employee. The remote worker will benefit from the social security paid by others .

A remote employer will not necessarily respect obligations that local employers may have (e.g. the number of maternity leave days). It may give the remote employers an unfair competitive advantage wrt the local economy.

Why do you get paid more than most other EU citizens for having US citizenship? Just because it’s a US company? Did you get the job in the US then move to Croatia? Do they only hire US citizens? How does the local tax situation work out?

Sorry for asking so many questions. I’m curious because I’m also an EU/US dual citizen about to start my career in tech.

Basically it is because it is a US company. I got the job after I moved to Croatia. In this case, you generally need to be hired on as a contractor. Of course, your employer needs to know that you are a US citizen and you are living abroad, for US government tax reasons.

The way it works is that you basically look for contractor jobs that are remote-only, that are based out of the US. You ask them if they are willing to take on you, a US citizen with US-based work credentials, working abroad (in X country in Y time zone), as a contractor.

The key is that you need to get a local (abroad, where you reside) payroll company to do the taxes (as an intermediary) between you and the company. Technically you can do the taxes yourself, if you know what you are doing, but usually this is the best way to approach it. It certainly looks better to your employer to do it this way.

I live in Thailand. One of the big tech companies here is agoda. If you have dual citizenship, and you apply for a job there and present your non-Thai passport (HK, SG, USA, etc), your job offer will be for significantly more.

I like your username given this context.

I’d imagine the NZ government would be happy to attract rich people to move in. Doesn’t Australia have sone pretty steep financial requirements for those who want to emigrate there?

"In all fairness to Mr. Mellon here, it was a really big check." - Back to School

> I should also point out something else unfair. I am a dual US|EU (Croatian) citizen who works part-time remotely as a contractor for a US-based company in Croatia, while studying for her masters degree in electrical engineering full time. Because I am an EU citizen, I can work in 30+ countries remotely, outside of the United States, while essentially getting paid more (compared to the locals and most other European Union citizens) for just having US citizenship and related credentials.

For another perspective as a US citizen living in Europe, getting work remotely for US company really only works in tech from what I have seen (maybe in other professions, but they are not that common). What you need is the combination of being able to work on contract, and hopefully not have to shift your hours unless you are working part time. For companies that are large, established, and have remote workers you will likely be paid at market rate for where you live. The tax situation can get complicated depending on your income level, and tax rates in most European countries are much higher than the US. Your investment options outside the US are limited, many expats retain their US banks for this reason. You won't have the benefit of a 401k contribution either. The best situation for employment is being able to invoice a company directly and get paid on a contract, not every company is willing to do this. Otherwise, worst case you would be employed by a local PEO which means for tax purposes you are a full time employee and will likely be paying more taxes than you would in the US. I think Croatia might be in the sweet-spot of countries that hasn't a decent quality of life but also low taxes for independent contractors.

This setup looks to me indeed not sustainable on the long run. I'm not giving recommendations, I'm just thinking that working for a local (or nearer) company and/or giving up US citizenship could be ways to achieve a simpler and cheaper living...

I’m the OP. I am not that sentimental about being American. However, the US discovered the very rare disease that I have in the early 2000s, and ultimately saved my life (and others) around the world. That is the only reason why I do not renounce my citizenship.

Because of this, I also have complex healthcare needs. So, the US always is a place to fall back on, as it has a lot of doctors treating obscure conditions.

For example, the German freelance visa requires a local economic interest, which translates to having clients in Germany. If you can't find German clients, you won't get the visa nor be ableto renew it. They check this thoroughly.

Howeber, Malta let's you buy a EU citizenship for 650,000€, and other EU countries have similar schemes for rich people.

You should hurry to apply because the EU is starting to move towards blocking those schemes: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-09/cyprus-an...

Yep, I heard about this already. I have a German residence permit, and I don't have 650k at hand anyway.

> minus Croatia and Czech Republic--both countries are part of the European Union and therefore become "westernized" quickly after accession

Why would Czech Republic, formerly a province of Austria-Hungary, need to become "westernized"? It was "westernized" centuries ago -- at the time of the first Přemyslids, in fact, when the Eastern church, courtesy of Cyril and Methodius, was replaced in Bohemia for political reasons by allegiance to the (Catholic) Regensburg diocese.

I worked in this guy's org as an L5 & L6. Opposition to remote work is the primary reason I left Google in 2015.

Its also one of the reasons we lost out on a number of good internal transfers. We had one amazing guy. World famous, luminary in his field, who lived in Livermore who had a deal to WFH 2-3 days a week who turned down a job in our org because he would have lost that deal & would have had to commute from Livermore every day.

EDIT: To be clear, the opposition to remote work that impacted me came from the VP immediately above me. It is certainly possible that other forks on the org chart under different VPs were different. I never specifically talked to this person and got his views on remote work.

Urs is an engineer who imagines that he can run business and manage people, neither of which is actually true.

Urs is kind of quite assured of himself about a lot of technical decisions. Probably because he blueprinted TI, and contributed directly to some of the key decisions (warehouse-scale computer, as one example, although I am not sure if he or Luiz is more principal). He largely no longer made any good decision since the google plus era?

I read somewhere it states that Urs was behind the push of google plus.

Urs missed Cloud. Half-heartedly built GAE, which is technically superior, but mediocrely implemented.

Urs decided to defund internal development, in order to boost Cloud, after realizing google was years behind. That was a laughable technical decision.

Personally, Urs shows some form of personal distaste towards a few old but still working systems, and tried to make them disappear by cutting off their resources. borgcfg was one of them. Another evidence of Urs losing touch of the technical reality. borgcfg code is right behind C++, Java, the 3rd most human written code in Google. Make it disappear by cutting off its resources is essentially making almost every engineer suffer at Google... (I am behind the effort to revitalize borgcfg, and experienced the ridiculousness behind this view).

For all Urs' bad points, the point about internal vs external is incredibly true. XAML was a slow, painful mess in Windows 8 because all of the internal UI was largely developed in a parallel private internal framework. Once the internal shell UI started being built with the exact same frameworks and tools as public customers had to use, there was suddenly a bunch more pressure and resources dedicated to making them suck less, and the ecosystem as a whole was better for it.

Urs wasn't behind Google+. He may have supported it strongly, I don't remember, but G+ was a Larry&Sergey thing. They became obsessed with the idea that Facebook would beat them at everything because social was magic unicorn dust.

Urs missed Cloud

He didn't merely miss it but actively rejected it. I remember pushing for Borg to be turned into a product when I was there. The stock line (which I think came from Urs) was that Google's opportunity cost from renting out its hardware was so huge that it'd never make sense to do so, because ads was a superior business model to anything else and machine demand was infinite.

> Google's opportunity cost from renting out its hardware was so huge that it'd never make sense to do so, because ads was a superior business model to anything else and machine demand was infinite.

This seems reasonable though. Cloud is much lower margin than ads, so what’s the proposition to move into it?

Just because I’m good at something doesn’t mean I should do it. I make a mean scrambled egg, but don’t want to go into that business.

Good question but there must be one, because Google very much wants to win in cloud.

It doesn’t seem like Google wants to win. They’ve been distant #3/4 for 10 years.

If google wanted to win, I’d expect them to be more competitive.

I don’t really use GCP much but it seems like a hobby product line.

For example, they only have $4B revenue last quarter with almost $1B of losses (9% of Google’s revenue) [0], Compared to AWS’ $13.5B (12% of Amazon revenue) and Azure’s $15B (not sure what percent as this number includes lots of things that I don’t really consider cloud).

[0] https://www.parkmycloud.com/blog/aws-vs-azure-vs-google-clou...

It's hardly a hobby given the huge amount of features they've added to it. It's not winning, but that's not due to lack of trying. Probably more due to lack of enterprise nous and a bad reputation in certain areas.

Well, Urs actually gave answer at all-hands meeting, when everything became “cloud, cloud, cloud”. Clouds grow so fast, that Google would eventually stop being hardware purchaser #1 in the world, loose best discounts, which would make Search/Ads unprofitable. So there was no choose but to join cloud arms-race.

But of course it was too late. It was essentially IE moment for Google.

> Google's opportunity cost from renting out its hardware was so huge

ATM it is not wrong.

That's maybe the moment when an once visionary leader lost their grasp over the future. Instead, they start to focus on maintaining their own competitive advantage.

Exactly what innovator's dilemma prescribed...

His personality really comes out in this statement:

and will drop by the office occasionally, saying he plans to be in the Bay Area "on a regular basis" as travel restrictions ease.

Anyone who thinks they can jump this many time zones 'regularly' and be just as productive, either doesn't travel often, is deluding themselves, or is trying to paint a false picture of themselves to the public.

“Regular” is the key point, that doesnt include frequency. Im in australia but did 6 trips to NA/EU in the year before the pandemic. Ideally Id aim for ~3 to cover the major business process/planning/promo cycles. Thats not too frequent, but still regular.

Many high-level businesspeople travel from ~US to ~China and back weekly. There's no way I could do it as jetlag is brutal on me, but you and I don't mainline young boy blood.

> mainline young boy blood Thanks for that joke :D

I wonder if it still is a common practice among rich people? After being so ridiculed for this.

i think if you have to ask.... it's likely happening

You'd be surprised how quickly you can get over jetlag when traveling in first class. It makes a world of a difference.

(used to travel a lot for work, and was lucky enough to get upgraded a few times to business and once to 1st).

100.000% as productive isn’t a reasonable standard. Flying first class in lie-flat seats helps immensely to reduce the impact of the travel itself. Jet lag is still an impact, but most frequent travelers can find a mechanism that works ok for them. You might be at 50% for a day, 80% for another two, then at 90+% per trip. That’s usually workable.

Trying to do that sitting in a middle economy seat isn’t directly comparable.

New Zealand is a long flight but IIRC it’s about a 21 hour time change to California (give or take DST) which only feels like about 3 hours. (Not defending the subject of the article, just an interesting time quirk).

21 hours is equivalent to 3 hours though, things just get wonky when you cross the IDT.

I still work at Google and I've also heard all of these stories. I have heard of multiple people transferring to other parts of the company or quitting because getting any kind of remote work arrangement while working under Urs was near impossible.

It's right here in the article, buddy

    A Google spokesperson told Insider that Hölzle never opposed remote work for employees who didn't have a certain seniority level or wouldn't be assigned to an office.

If you can't trust a Google spokesperson on HR issues then who can you trust?

All the Google staff commenting in this comment section?

Poe's law strikes again

If I don't trust Google as a whole, I'm _definitely_ not going to trust their spokesperson on HR issues.

For some context, here's the current situation for New Zealand citizens attempting to enter New Zealand (according to newspapers -- I'm not from there):

>"The demand is so high, and the supply so scarce, that any rooms that become available disappear within seconds. Dates are released completely randomly and can appear any time of the day or night, and there's no queue."

>"It makes it close to impossible for the average New Zealander to get home," said Chris Ruscoe, currently in Tennessee, about the high demand and the software enabling people to secure rooms so quickly."

>"The difficulty and frustration and desperation that these folks are feeling, including me - who tried for three weeks, 18-plus hours a day and got nowhere."

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/446516/tech-savvy-kiwis-... ("Tech-savvy Kiwis able to use scripts to snap up MIQ spots before others")

I don't understand, there are barriers of entry into NZ for NZ citizens? What? How, what?

* Entry means extended hotel quarantine

* Limited supply of state-managed quarantine slots

* Additional high friction from the digital application process + people gaming it

(Per the article: signing up isn't a FIFO queue, it's "something shows up on a website & the first entity that clicks it wins")

The limiting factor is managed isolation. You can return if there are flights from where you are currently, but you need to secure a spot in managed isolation first (2 weeks in a hotel). https://www.miq.govt.nz/travel-to-new-zealand/secure-your-pl...

I'd never voluntarily sign up for quarantine and am fortunate to have traveled between three countries in the past year that dont require them. If my home country started requiring quarantine while I was away I'd refuse to go back. What a joke. Im not impressed by their stats, it's not worth it.

It's 2 weeks in a hotel. I've been through it. It's not the end of the world.

Agreed. I did this in December in Thailand and I had no problems. Just come in with a plan to stay busy the two weeks. I was able to work remotely which took up the majority of my time.

I've spent months in Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia pre-Covid. I'm very familiar with the nomad spots. I love it there but not worth a quarantine for me. There are tropical beaches and coworking spaces in latin America too.

Over the winter covid case rates were pretty bad in Latin America. Thailand was at less than 100 cases/day, with a large fraction being caught in these quarantine facilities. Thailand seemed like the safer option.

Also it was a 7 week stay, so 2 weeks of quarantine was quite short compared to the duration of the trip.

This is why your home country is likely rampant with covid, where as nz is not.

NZ got step 1 right (isolate) but massively dropped the ball on step 2 (vaccinate ASAP).

NZ, if they continue at current rate, are on track to vaccinate 100% in 51 days. Of course that's never going to happen as not everyone wants the vaccine etc, but it seems their rollout is going well if not slightly delayed.

Australia meanwhile hasn't even vaccinated 5% of the pop as they put all their eggs into a political choice (on-shore produced AstraZeneca, support aussie produced!) and are now scrambling to find a replacement. There's not enough vaccine for demand.

Both took the same isolate approach, but it looks like NZ is gonna come out of this sooner.

Australians I know got Pfizer shots. I don't understand why they did though, none of them are from high risk populations or likely to be the source of spread. And it's not helping them to leave the country either - one of them just had to cancel an NZ trip.

Yeah, there's a supply of Pfizer but it's a drop in the ocean compared to what they committed to AZ. The government declined a deal for Pfizer last year in favour of majority AZ, and has had to renegotiate for Pfizer since. Increased Pfizer supply is due to arrive soon.

> on track to vaccinate 100% in 51 days

I can guarantee you that this is not going to happen... I would be lucky if I am vaccinated this year... Vaccines are super scarce so we are real snails atm!

Your government seems confident they can keep up this pace. I hope they're not overpromising on that front

I am in group 4 (out of 4) and vaccination was supposed to start in July and it has been pushed to end of July. Some people in group 3 have still not been contacted and there are plenty of frontline workers not vaccinated yet. The government is voluntarily vague to protect itself so it is frustrating

As a kiwi who hasn’t seen family in a couple of years (my daughter has never met any family member), quarantine is a possibility.

Sure, nobody is about to have a vacation in NZ voluntarily, but that’s not what we’re discussing here, is it?

In most common law countries (I don't know about the rest of the world) citizens don't actually have a practical right to re-enter their own country. Don't sass customs officers because they can keep you out indefinitely.

Incidentally Australia has suspended citizens' right of reentry altogether,

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-56953052

*from India. There's still an international arrival cap of ~3500 people per week, which was just reduced in response to the current outbreak in Sydney (https://www.infrastructure.gov.au/department/media/mr_202103...)

Of course NZ is not open to people just moving here right now - in general only citizens, permanent residents and Australians from some Aussie states have been allowed in since the beginning of Covid. We're not taking tourists or new immigrants at this time.

There are some exceptions, not easy to get, a very small number of rich people (14) making large investments here are being let in, I assume he and his wife are buying there way in.

A close friend of mine immigrated to NZ in April on a work visa with his family. He's not rich at all, just a practicing doctor (not research). There seem to be exceptions other than buying your way in.

Yes we're taking a small number of people with specifically needed skills (like doctors) on a case by case basis - "Google Executive" is unlikely to be one of these

The article did say that this was planned since before the pandemic, so maybe some prior decision still applies?

We've essentially put all previous immigration processing on hold since Covid - our mandatory quarantine is currently full through November for just citizens returning home

I wonder how many of those MIQ bookings are citizens returning home from non-essential overseas trips.

I think we should probably be making those trips a lot harder/more expensive and using those MIQ slots for more compassionate or business grounds.

MiQ is free for citizens/permanent residents returning permanently home once (the rules are more complex than that but that's the essence, waivers are available for compassionate grounds) - so it's similar to what you suggest

Yes, but it's not that expensive when you do have to pay. The fees don't even cover the full cost of the MIQ stay. It should be double or triple the cost of the MIQ stay because of the opportunity cost.

You can't blame NZ for letting in some rich people as a risk/reward calculation. Presumably they will buy things and pay big taxes: a net benefit?

Might be a net benefit, but as a NZer it goes against the local culture for most of us, buying your way to the head of the queue seems like corruption to us, it's something that was forced on us by a previous right wing government and it's sad to see the current one continuing to allow it

That's a wonderful cultural aspiration and it makes me want to move there even more!

Keep in mind, we have a political party with absolute power right now. So if you move here, you'll hear a lot of blaming the last govt, while not wanting to acknowledge that the current govt is doing this also and could easily change it.

Identity politics is alive and well in NZ as much as it is anywhere. Blame the politicians who were in power 5 years back.

So you can't really call it an aspiration when all major political parties here support the same model - only the lens of folks political affiliations is being covered here.

Funnily enough, for me it's the pragmatism of the politicians that makes me want to move there.

I have personally met one big-league tech executive who got a NZ company to declare him an "essential worker" and migrated his family to NZ this year using that. I'm sure there are others. I'm not sure if that would work if you're already working for that company overseas.

On one hand, it's a bit bogus. Many people wouldn't see his role as essential.

On the other hand, it is good for NZ to have this kind of person move here.

I thought this as well, but its not true. The area I live has had a large influx of people I meet at the park that have just arrived from overseas and their husbands got work in the government and large companies.

Seems like the skilled migrant category is still open if you are mid career from a English speaking country and have a wife and kids.

I wanted to be more specific but I can't due to privacy reasons.

I just don't think smart companies can afford to force the employees back to the office right now.

It does feel like some kind of worker revolt. Literally everyone I know wants to quit or do something else. Not like we are talking independent variables here either. If you are already thinking about quitting and your co-worker quits obviously the chance you quit goes way up since your job probably just got way shittier.

I say this as someone who just went back to the office 2 days ago and I love it. Happiness to me is not sitting at home all day with as little interaction as possible.

I think companies are just going to have to play ball with this in the near term as I don't know how they can afford not to.

What do you think the long term impact will be?

The company I work for may have adapted to remote work by noticing they didn't need the Bay Area talent pool. In the past few weeks offices opened in Mexico City and elsewhere for engineering.

This was originally reported by CNET (with additional context), so let me encourage folks to give them your clicks instead: https://www.cnet.com/news/googles-hypocritical-remote-work-p...

I hope beautiful, pristine, safe, friendly, equitable New Zealand doesn’t continue to evolve into a haven for the very rich.

I’d like to ask Urs why NZ? Why now?

He reaped the maximum financial benefit of living in a dysfunctional society while paying little tax.

Is the US too unstable for you now? Too much poverty? Too polluted? Fires in California too wild? Homeless is San Francisco too numerous?

Irrelevant detail: if he lives in NZ and works on California time, California's 9AM happens at 4AM his time, and California's 5PM is his 12 noon. At least with the current clock with daylight savings.

Seems like a sweet gig, wake up early, finish by lunch time.

I work roughly those hours (from NZ) - the time difference is 3-5 hours depending on time of year

Of course you've forgotten that dateline - Monday here is Sunday in the US

I worked from Dubai last year for about a month. My company is on GMT-5/GMT-4, and Dubai is GMT+4. Their weekend is Friday/Saturday. So working remotely, I was working on nights before both days off. It wasn't a great schedule (but I didn't care because COVID made everything boring).

I wouldn't want to wake up before dawn.

I solve this by taking an afternoon nap - that lets me live reasonably comfortably in two timezones

I wonder if NZ being a day ahead would be a drag. Certainly I think a 5 hour time zone swing is doable. Annoying, but doable. I did a stint with a 11 hour time zone difference. Wouldn't want to do that again.

The day-ahead thing is fine. I work half-day on Saturday and Monday is nice and quiet.

As a senior executive the wall time really doesn't matter to his output or work. He is expected and very likely making decisions and working/replying to issues all hours he is awake. He isn't being measured on something like 'amount of code committed', he's being measured by how effective his entire organization is performing. People in his org are relying on him to be the arbiter and decision maker that unblock and move forward the organization.

I've always wondered this about senior execs. As an IC I could easily unplug at 5p every day. Now, as a manager of managers I have to force myself to unplug for a couple hours each night to maintain some sanity but I'm always thinking and noodling about work in some capacity when I'm awake. I can no longer tell whether this is due to how the pandemic has changed work culture or whether it was always like this. But I imagine senior execs who run orgs spanning thousands of engineers are always plugged in, even if they're great at delegating.

Yes. Not a senior exec myself but worked as an exec assistant with glorified title for a couple and they were plugged in at any time, all days (Sunday a bit less). Their only balance was a slightly more generous leave (about 2 months per year). Some of the work is a bit less taxing, lots of meetings, calls with interesting people, as long as things are going well. Some is really boring administrative work. I was doing the boring parts that I could, and was a fly on the wall for the rest, and still they could not delegate most of it to me or others just by the nature of it.

Thanks for the insight -- I have never seen an exec take more than 3-4 weeks per year though. Did they ever take the full two months in your experience?

Yes, 1 month and 2*2 weeks.

If he has to communicate with Europe (Switzerland?) That's going to be impossible

Just to point out, Urs Hölzle was the employee no. 8 at Google.

Why are the lowly minions so pissed, he can work from wherever he wants, or not!

Hypocrisy is not an endearing leadership trait

Sure but does employee no. xxx,xxx have so much of their head up their arse that they feel entitled to deserve equal working benefits as The 8th Googler?

Yes

Of course he can work from wherever he wants. The problem is, if he thinks that remote working is bad, he shouldn't do it either.

he thinks it's bad for other engineers under him - but not for himself, since he can trust himself to do the work properly.

If he doesn't trust the engineers under him to work without constant supervision, then he has a huge recruitment/management issue to deal with.

His "fuck you" money has its own "fuck you" money...but if he doesn't want to work in the same circumstances as everybody else, why not just retire?

When you're employee #8 at one of the biggest technology companies in history, and help create and drive almsot everything that got the company there... the idea of retirement and doing nothing is horrifyingly boring to some people.

in the end Google opted for WFH, however.

I heard it metaphorized like this: if a congress member votes against some healthcare bill but it gets approved, does that congress member lose the ability to apply? I'm sure there's some Schadenfreude thinking about it, but logistically it doesn't make much sense.

I’m a Googler minion and I approve this message. Dude paid his dues. Inasmuch as we all want to be treated equally, there’s reward for hard work.

One thing missing from the article: what evidence is there he opposed remote work? The article says,

"A Google spokesperson told Insider that Hölzle never opposed remote work for employees who didn't have a certain seniority level or wouldn't be assigned to an office."

which is more negatives than I'm strictly comfortable with.

I have never understood why these C-suite types feel like they need to share their lives and experiences with employees.

Who truly cares?

My current employeer, in europe, has a new c-suite figure from abroad who likes to regale us with tales of his life at every meeting.

This person is good at their jobs, but this behaviour is just buying them ridicule from the employees.

Get it through your head C-suites. We do not care, as we do not know you closely enough (as we do not work with you).

This type of comms internally is simply a respectful notification that you won’t see someone on campus or be able to book in-person meetings. Someone as high profile as Urs making this kind of move and not letting his team know would create infinite tensions.

The fact that it made a CNET article and then HN discussion isn’t the execs fault, if anything you’re feeding the fire by adding to the discussion

I am not talking about the internal comms, as obviously those are required and make perfect sense to send to who ever might interact with him on a regular basis.

It is this little tidbit that caused me to write that comment:

"If things go well, we may decide to stay longer," he continued in the memo. "I'm looking forward to this adventure and to sharing the results of our relocation 'experiment' with you."

In the light of having stood in the way of others doing exactly what he was doing, this comment leaves an even worse taste than it would have otherwise.

humans, even billionares, are still social creatures. Same reason people share their family or sometimes personal details on team slack channels, even if I personally wouldn't tell anyone past immediate co-workers I affect.

Maybe not the best choice of words, but I don't think there's as much smoke here as people on social media are making of it outside your typical mega rich person not being in touch with the not mega rich. But empathy is a much bigger problem than the tech industry.

Interesting stance. My wife in Senior management, side for one of the largest employers in CA (non-tech) they've been very careful on allowing for any sort of changes to senior management's remote work policies until they have sorted it with the rank-and-file.

While I can see an argument for having to reach a level of seniority to achieve the ability to work remotely I'd also argue that there's a similar bar that hits at the most Senior levels.

I just want to know how he's getting into NZ since the border is closed to non-citizens and people who can't prove existing residency.

Asking for a friend, who's me, also trying to move to NZ. :)

Is your friend a FAANG exec? If not, I am sorry.

Even FAANG exec's aren't allowed in, last time I checked. NZ doesn't care about that sort of thing. Only if you have $$$ to put in somewhere.

But maybe things got loosened up a little bit lately, pre-Delta, plus we don't know where Urs has citizenship.

> Only if you have $$$ to put in somewhere.

Which FAANG execs do

>NZ doesn't care about that sort of thing.

Are we thinking of the same NZ?

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/covid-19-coronavirus-wea...

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/446151/border-exemptions...

In most countries the minister responsible for border control will have wide discretion about who is allowed in and out.

This means that if you’re politically well connected it can be trivial to get the necessary approvals. But for everyone else it will be extremely difficult, especially for countries like Australia and NZ which have very low vaccination rates.

Here in NZ that would be considered corruption - likely resulting scandal if discovered.

We do have an out for very rich people who want to invest here (Peter Thiel abused this to get NZ citizenship from our previous right wing govt, there has been a lot of shouting about this)

NZer here. Why would you want to move here? Everything is expensive, the houses are made of cardboard, and local opportunities are extremely limited.

When you say opportunities are extremely limited - is it in general or in IT specifically ?

I’m planning to move to NZ soon and would love to hear more about the IT market.

The IT market is essentially non-existent outside the main centres (Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch), and of those only Christchurch approaches affordable (mostly as a consequence of its recent shakiness).

I haven't been there in a decade, but back in ~2010 I remember it being slightly cheaper than American, and noticeably cheaper than Australia. Have things changed?

Housing prices don't ever stop here, a lack of CGT and aggressively lending banks means a very unhealthy amount of capital ends up in residential real-estate.

My wife and I bought a 1950s, 5 bedroom house 30 minutes north of Christchurch for $520K in 2018. Estimated market price is now $640K. Not bad capital gains in two years... ...not that we're selling until some kids move out of home.

Prices have also been pushed up by expats with considerable purchasing power fleeing Covid, and supply that is very far behind demand.

There was something like 1 million Kiwis living overseas before Covid, which is 20% of the population here.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/homed/real-estate/1256918...

Long story short: if you want a three bedroom house, a garage, a little bit of garden, perhaps a view? A million bucks. Roughly twelve times average wage.

Been looking at housing in Wellington past couple of months. All but one of the houses we looked at were very old, never insulated, often pretty terrible places with few updates over their life. They were all 1.3-1.5m NZD for approximately 120-160 sqm. So think something like ~1m USD for ~1400sqft that then needs 200k USD to bring it up to US standards for insulation, to make it healthy and ensure your kids don’t get asthma, etc. I really can’t express the kind of miserable shape most of these houses were in. In the US many would be just sold as tear downs and replaced with something new.

The market here would in all normal respects be a bubble with average house prices now over 12x the average wage. The most unaffordable in the OECD I think. But the problem is the only thing NZers put their money into is housing. It’s treated as an investment where the goal is to build equity then use that to get the next house etc. This has been supported with very very low tax rates on property and no CGT on sales. (You pay a pathetic 0.25% tax on your property in Auckland.) On top of this poor policies have lead to not building enough housing for the growing population. So it’s unclear how it will resolve but it’s adding a lot of stress to the society, as half the population face a bleak future of housing insecurity and handing over most of their wages to live in bad conditions.

Agreed, in the same way that "it's not paranoia if they really are out to get you," in this case "it's not a bubble if the skyrocketing prices have a real foundation" -- in this case, a severe shortage of supply that is not forecast to improve.

It's not even a good investment when it comes to one's primary home. So your property went up 60% in ten years -- so did the one you'll have to buy if you sell it.

The newspapers abound with stories of houses that earnt more in a year than their occupants did.

It is never the right time to buy and few years later, after the market took 25%, you are like "We did a good move back in the day!".

Bought my house 2 years ago (Auckland) and it is pretty good conditions (for NZ) with (almost) no isolation, windows that I have never seen in France, and a door which giant gaps at the bottom! And yeah, 1m+ $NZD... Hopefully the "prices double every 10 years in Auckland" trend will continue (we have some room for the interest rates to be lower...).

Good luck for Wellington mate !

Our IT market is absolutely starving for people. The problem is, local companies don't pay very much. They consider a 150K NZD a good salary.

You can make twice that if you get a job doing similar work remotely for a US company; I used to, and I meet a lot of people who do. Nobody knows how many people are doing this, but it's a lot and growing.

I think our local companies might not realize they're competing in a global labour market now and need to pay accordingly.

> They consider a 150K NZD a good salary.

In 2020 when I was looking for a senior dev position, 120k ($83K US) was considered a good salary. Though I didn't have a network or a specialization, which hurt me.

> You can make twice that if you get a job doing similar work remotely for a US company; I used to, and I meet a lot of people who do. Nobody knows how many people are doing this, but it's a lot and growing.

Any tips for how to break into the US market?

> Any tips for how to break into the US market?

Most people I know doing this have a network, but there are companies that would probably interview you without a referral. In particular fully-remote companies like Zapier and Gitlab would be good bets. (I don't know if Gitlab pays global salaries, but Zapier definitely does.)

Half-agree. I'm a returned expat of a couple of years ago, and we came back primarily for the kids. It's expensive and the consumer choice is going to be a shock for most Americans, that's true. And I wouldn't have done it if I couldn't work remotely for a US company. But with that as an option, all the moreso now, it's still a good place to raise a family if you can finance it.

I really wish it were easy to do this as a non-citizen.

Better the Shire than Gondor.

Easy: There's no capital gains tax. If a large portion of your wealth consists of stock options (which I'd assume Urs' is, given that he was employee #8 at Google), it means more money for you, while living in a beautiful place. Expensive doesn't matter, nor does construction materials used in (poor people's non-custom-built) housing, and definitely not the local job market.

NZ also has universal healthcare. For anybody tired of the US healthcare "system" (what we have doesn't deserve to be called a system), that's very attractive even if you're not wealthy. Especially not if you're wealthy.

But Urs is a US tax resident for life now, US doesn’t let you become non-resident. So he will continue to owe capital gains in the US and if he becomes NZ resident that doesn’t change. But he will then owe NZs higher tax rates on his regular income and other things too (like foreign financial arrangements which can get messy).

Edit: IANAtaxL but NZ does have a pretty sweet deal where new residents get to not pay tax on overseas income for four years. So Urs could come in for four years. Then if he maintains a permanent home in the US that is always available to him (not rented) a tax expert might argue he is dual resident and under the dual tax agreement would tie break to the US so doesn’t owe tax in NZ on his US income, which would be all of his income. So this is probably what he would do. It’s a pretty sweet deal, I don’t think it’s fair you basically don’t pay tax to NZ under that arrangement if your income is overseas and you can afford to leave a house unrented.

> There's no capital gains tax

Wouldn't you still pay US tax as a green card holder or citizen? After decades in the US would be surprising if he wasnt.

(And even if not, does the US have an exit tax when giving back green card or passport?)

What you describe only affects citizens (but surely he's a citizen by now). Edit to add: and green card holders who had their green card for 8+ years without naturalizing. The green card would generally be voided by moving to NZ for a year; it might help get away with _future_ appreciation of assets but of course not any _past_ appreciation.

There’s an exit tax that applies to long-term green card holders and people who give up their citizenship.

You're right, I'll amend to mention this edge case.

Gains are taxed as income though - does that happen in the US? I always thought that even with capital gains tax you kept more of your investment money there than here.

Yes: in the US, long-term capital gains (i.e. an asset you have owned for more than a year) are taxed at a significantly lower rate than income. Short-term cap gains are treated as income.

If you have near-infinite money this is a great place to live.

NZer here. Everything is expensive, there are some good houses, and local opportunities don't matter if you have your own business or work remotely for a US company (I've done both). With the right remote job you get paid enough to not worry about the expense. And NZ rocks: sane politics, great environment. And if you live in Auckland: great weather, diverse, great food.

Its a safe stable government, surrounded by water with plenty of nature with a temperate climate.

If you can afford to move here you can afford the overpriced housing marketing and food costs.

There are exceptions for the rich and famous, of course. [1]

[1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-newzea...

All animals are equal - some are more equal than others.

The hypocrisy is always stunning.

The push to reopen my office is led by our COO... who is at the office like four hours a week, and otherwise works from home.

If senior levels all exercise their option to work remotely, then who’s going to watch all the underlings in the office?

The machines

The middle managers.

Remote for me but not for thee

It doesn't seem that bad to believe lower level staff should have different working environments to higher level staff. I don't believe it's particularly hypocritical of my boss to have more flexibility in the way he works than I enjoy.

What's your thought process here? Is it related to the job role or you think underlings should just be treated differently/worse?

I mean, that is how it already works in the workplace. More senior positions are better compensated, including perks.

I personally think individuals should have the choice to work locally or remotely, if it doesn't considerably impact their work (ie a job that doesn't require a lot of face to face time), but the idea that more senior people get better options really doesn't need to be justified as a deviation from the norm.

It really does.

I know that as a junior engineer (~ first two years) I needed a lot more direction and handholding, and that is much easier to get in an office than remotely.

This is really cultural / company specific. I spent days on screenshare coding with fresh team members. Literally had days of that in my schedule. If it matters for the company/management it's not harder to do remotely.

So, what, you have a playpen of juniors and no one there to help them? That makes zero sense. The premise of lower level staff needing to be in person is so senior level staff can interact with, help, and guide them. If the senior level staff isn't there it's pointless.

This all depends on where you draw the line for senior and job responsibilities. One position is that juniors and mentors must come onsite and work in the playpen.

Alternatively, you could expect the juniors to train help each other in the playpen with offsite mentoring.

It all comes down to how you think your shop is most productive and how learning will occur.

I am put in mind of the policy during the years when HP were a successful, growing company, that managers sat in open areas, while engineers sat in offices; the managers' work is being available to their staff; staff needed to be able to focus on their work.

This is just capitalism-is-feudalism bullshit.

That probably works, but a downside is that you probably want privacy when having a 1:1, and if you only leave for a meeting room when it's a difficult conversation, then people are going to be able to tell.

Also when I worked in a former HP building there weren't any windows in the offices, so that was depressing.

Leaders should be in the thick of it. People in leadership positions should have less flexibility because they shoulder by definition more responsibility. They need to be the first in the office and the last one out.

If you have an organisation where privileges increase and responsiveness decline as you move up the ladder you have invented cronyism. Someone in a top position needs to always be reachable, physically. It's the random coders who should be able to work remotely, not executives.

Say what you want about Musk's behaviour outside of work but he exemplifies this. Guy basically lived on the factory floor for months at a time.

Lead from the back. Do what I say, not what I do.

Just terrible leadership.

Good leadership is sacrificial.

Your boss should have less flexibility not more.

Too many people pretending to lead. Too many people in executive positions. Not enough actual leaders.

If Google loses this guy, tomorrow...whatever, he is just an employee, he is a cog. If all the guys beneath him decide to stop working, it is over.

I've been interviewing a ton of Googlers since my company (Salesforce) has a pretty good remote work policy going forward. We don't pay as well but probably the only big tech company with better WLB.

This article’s title is a click-bait masterpiece.

Big tech company? Check

Timely topic of remote work? Check

Element of hypocrisy to stoke outrage? Check

Of course, the title is so clickbait-y to be completely false, as refuted in the article:

> A Google spokesperson told Insider that Hölzle never opposed remote work for employees who didn't have a certain seniority level or wouldn't be assigned to an office.

Not that you can blame anyone for missing it; there are so many negatives in that text I'm having a hard time decoding what it's even saying...

In other words, Hölzle had a neutral stance?

It reads like the spokesperson specifically and precisely refuted the claim put to them exactly as it was stated. We can infer nothing - it might be that he thinks nobody should work remotely, or everyone should.

A few lines before that:

He [Hölzle] strongly opposed remote work for Google employees who didn't have a certain seniority level or wouldn't be assigned to an office, a resigning employee told CNET.

So, who do we want to believe?

both say that it's for senior employees and those without an office

> So, who do we want to believe?

They are both saying the same thing: Hölzle opposes the peasants working from home. The spokesperson is being deliberately opaque/circumspect by saying Hölzle never opposed senior folk (like him) working from home, but the level of seniority is left undefined.

The article said the spokesperson said Hölzle never opposed what the resigning employee said Hölzle strongly opposed. And it quoted the spokesperson saying all employees are eligible to apply for remote.

"Apply" is a neat word. Anyone can apply for anything.

Now, whether it's approved or not...

An employee who quit claims the opposite. Do you always believe spokespersons? Yikes.

Do you always believe disgruntled ex-employees?

I still work at Google and can confirm that. From everything I've heard, Urs has strongly opposed remote work for years, causing multiple talented and senior people to quit.

Yeah, there are regular emails at Google from low-level employees telling all about how they are relocating to Cambodia for remote work, seeing how they like it, but will occasionally drop in via plane. I'm getting so many relocation experiment updates I've had to mute the keyword!

Clearly, these are privileges available to all. It's wrong to even call them a privilege. Life is one big adventure.

Hmmmm who to believe, someone who was affected by the policy or the PR arm of the company involved.

The very sentence you quote clearly says that the overall claim is at least partially true -- indeed, most likely true for the majority of reports in his organization.

So it is completely false to say that it is "completely false".

“or wouldn't be assigned to an office” seems to be doing a lot here to obscure the true meaning

yes, I don't know what that's supposed to mean. If you're not assigned to an office, and you're not allowed to work from home, where do you work?

Bullshit! When i worked there he was very vocal about supposed benefits of open space and onsite-only working arrangements.

The only source for the claim that he opposed remote work is "a resigning employee told CNET." Show me an email, a memo, a video of a speech, something, anything... or don't hide behind anonymity.

He sounds like he is totally cut out to be a politician.

Conspiracy theory... the real reason companies want you working on site is because they know you know they'll notice if you take off too much time to interview other places.

People don't take time off for interviews, they fall sick or have mysterious appointments. And employers in that position don't really care, because it's better to let the employee leave voluntarily than to fire them and have to go through the entire HR process and pay unemployment.

Yes, and employees that are actively trying to leave (different than passively interviewing for drive-by opportunities) are probably putting in minimum input, maybe less. It's like 3-6mo to fire a software engineer, and its a ton of work. If they don't like it here, let them leave.

Some companies will even give you a bonus at any time to quit.

Headline sounds like clickbait. The premise is that senior level employees get more freedom. It's not really that surprising but I can see how that would be frustrating to some.

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