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Comment by c7DJTLrn | Hacker News Reader

Do Googlers mind working in the office much? They get plenty of free meals/snacks/beverages, great equipment, and great salary allowing them to live close to the office and pay for childcare if needed. I can't see the rest of the industry moving in the direction of returning to the office, because they don't have these things.

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If you want my opinion, open space sucks and I can buy my own snacks. After one day at the office, I feel my head is about to explode. Constant noise, bright artificial lights...

The only good thing is that I can have informal meetings with my colleagues, talk around the white board and so on... this is very valuable.

It feels very different when you have to pay for your own snacks. I definitely substantially moderated my consumption during remote work (and it's not like the amount they were spending on snacks gets paid to you either). It definitely improved my eating habits but I also miss free Diet Coke and protein shakes.

If I was getting paid the snack amount in cash then I'd probably be ok but as is free breakfast+lunch+snacks saves me on the order of $500/mo. And as someone who is pretty mediocre at cooking the quality of food is better as well.

I used to get a cold around every 6 weeks from working with people and being in the office with freezing airconditioning all year round. Since working from home I haven't been sick in two years.

You’re making your immune system weaker by not challenging it

My personal experience is it's a mixed bag.

- I love my teammates and it is so unbelievably rewarding getting to see them in person and share a space with them. We're social primates and it's soothing at some deep primal level to get to be around my tribe.

- The food is excellent. Not having to cook and wash fucking dishes again is god-damned divine. After two years of eating almost every meal at home, I fantastize about burning my entire kitchen to the ground.

- Just getting out of the house and having a change of scenery is really nice. Being in an office with other people working helps me switch into "Google employee" mode.

- I don't dig open plan offices at all. The one we're in now is a big empty white fluorescent lit box. It has a lot of windows with an excellent view which is great. But otherwise, it feels like sitting in the middle of an empty grocery store and I find it very hard to focus. More often than not, I grab a laptop and hide away in one of the lounge areas to get actual work done, which feels sort of paradoxical. (I'm probably an outlier in that I prefer to work on a couch with a laptop on my lap instead of at a desk with a big monitor.)

Outside of Silicon Valley, it is possible to live close to the office without a FAANG level salary. Beverages and snacks also are not that rare.

Well, you'd have to be outside of most big cities. Even on a tech salary, living near an office in central London isn't affordable. Not unless you're flat sharing which is basically mutually exclusive with having a family.

It's probably completely do-able in the US except in the top 20 or so COL locations - https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/region_rankings_curren...

London is the only city in the UK where that's the case, and many boroughs are commutable - it's only really the centre that's a problem.

Dallas is pretty fine. For a few years, I lived within a 10-15 minute drive to my office on a $60k salary. Inner-ring suburb and not downtown, but most of the offices here are in the inner-ring suburbs.

(and if that sounds low, don't worry: I now make much more and work for a company that doesn't even have offices in my time zone)

A lot of tech industry jobs are also outside of big cities. (As are Google jobs in the Bay Area; the BA is just something of an outlier in that fairly conventional suburbia is still priced higher than just about anyplace else in the country.)

Google cafeteria is pretty rare; delicious food free.

https://www.seriouseats.com/lunch-at-google-insanely-awesome...

Having worked at Google (albeit at a satellite office), those perks are nice, but working from home (my current situation) is a much much nicer perk.

“Great salary allowing them to live close to the office” is an interesting way of phrasing “requiring you to unnecessarily live in ludicrously expensive areas”.

Honestly in my experience the work environment itself is not great - google has cubicle pens with half height walls, it super frustrating to work when people are continually going back and forth around you.

Different people have different priorities. It's usually the younger employees who prioritize free meals and ping pong over flexible work schedules and spending more time with family.

last google office I visited around 2017 sucked ass. Food was no longer cafeteria style. It was a salad cart and a window where you could order a sandwich. Desks were five feet wide ikea type desks that were crammed in to a large open space with no partitions.

Outside the Bay Area you could buy your own perks that are much better than what Google provides and still afford a place to live that's orders of magnitude nicer.

I enjoyed the office. I liked the amenities and eating lunch with people I only sort of knew grew my professional network very well. But it doesn't hold a candle compared to being able to leave in a location that supports my family goals.

Great equipment? I had to wait several months to get a modern computer since my previous 3 year old computer broke. I was stuck on a Chromebook that couldn't even process email. So, no, equipment ain't "great." And I am so sick of hearing "but the food!" Food doesn't mean squat to me over flexibility.

The perks are great, as is getting to chat with people face to face.

But the open office is just fucking terrible for getting actual work done.

Commute sucks. Anything above 30min for one way is unbearable.

Yeah, even with the buses into Mountain View.

That's why I will continue to work from home. My old office is about 1/2 mile from Google HQ and pre-Covid it was 45-50 minutes each way unless I stayed in the office quite late.

1/2 mile is like a 10 minute walk.

Yeah but in an American city that walk is going to be awful.

Yep, U.S. cities are designed for cars, not humans.

Perhaps they commute to/from home rather than the google office.

I don't work for Google. I said that my office is near their HQ.

Please read my comment again. My office is 1/2 mile from Google HQ, but I do not live at Google HQ. I'm about 13 miles away, but at peak commute times pre-Covid the roads were parking lots, and public transportation options take about 75 minutes each way.

Note the article says this is 3 days a week. I also imagine there is a ton of flexibility at Google WRT hours so you can try to time it before or after rush hour.

I used to do 1h30m each way to and from work, five days a week before COVID :)

Does that include time it takes to park, walk to office, hop on elevator, and set up desk for the day. That can add a bit of time.

Door to door. 20 mins walking, 1 hour train, another 5-10 walking.

I guess that's a matter of perspective. I used to drive 45mins one way under light traffic conditions. This was a choice made of keeping a decent paying job and living somewhere with ranked school system. Sometimes, sacrifices are made when thinking of others.

Yeah traffic (or lack thereof) makes a massive difference. 45 min in light traffic... sure. 45 min each way, every day, in heavy, stop and go traffic is soul crushing.

I meant that it was 45 minutes in light traffic. It only got worse if traffic was not light, which it was not more often than it was. I didn't mean for it to be that ambiguous.

Pretty sure google has their own bus with internet / capability to work on the way.

wasting 40+ min a day for a work-related commute still sucks, internet or not.

-xoogler

Pre-pandemic, my commute was walking 20 minutes and then taking a train for 10 minutes. I loved it so much!

Now I just have a dog that I walk for a few hours every day instead haha.

I used to complain about my subway commute, but when it stopped I found I missed reading books for 30m twice a day, or alternatively running to work. These activities formed a clear boundary to each workday that I have found hard to replace without a commute.

Housing in SF is crazy expensive, commuting takes ages (and we've shown it's a complete waste) and a lot of people probably don't even want to live in California.

Forget snacks, the amount of money you save by not living there and not commuting could pay for an in house chef.

If the last 3 years are any indicator, living in SF and the west coast in general means putting up with 2-3 months of choking, dangerous wild fire smoke every year too. It was a novelty for one summer but is slowly going to poison and cause serious long term harm the more it continues. I don't think people realize how unlivable the west coast is quickly becoming.

This year, the smoke from the California fires was actually much worse in Colorado & Utah than the bay area proper. You can't necessarily escape this by moving.

True, but it's going to be bad some years. This year I expect an outright disaster, considering we've had the driest winter in 150+ years of recorded history. Probably it's going to be unbreathable at certain points.

On rethinking my statement I've realized I should encourage the Californians to stay in California and not spread communism to the rest of the country. So yeah, you can't escape the bad things by moving, stay there.

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