Luckily, there will be plenty of remote firms to scoop up all the engineers Google is about to hemorrhage.
What a miserable work culture it must be for them to even have the nerve to declare this.
Downvote away, I’ll be hiring some of them! ;-)
What a miserable work culture it must be for them to even have the nerve to declare this.
Downvote away, I’ll be hiring some of them! ;-)
I hate threads like these because people will circle around generic talking points while missing all the nuance and context behind this actual decision, like allowing almost any SWE to go remote that asks, giving a heads up, having a well-defined policy.
Do you have the policy document or data to back that up? Asking because I am friends with a Google engineer who asked to go remote and was denied (even though nothing about their role requires them to be in-person).
Full disclosure I work at Google.
https://careers.google.com/jobs/results/?distance=50&has_rem...
They tend to promote from within and along the engineering track, which results in engineers reasoning from "What would I (a high-performing engineer) do?" and not necessarily what's best for the team.
The people who applied and were accepted for fully remote aren’t the ones that need to go back. Only the people with an assigned desk in the offices that are re-opening are mandated to go back.
You’re getting tripped on the wording of an article that was hastily written after a reporter got wind of an email
But you are still using the same word that I was getting tripped up on. Either the return to the office is optional or it is mandated. It can't be both.
The decision to work as remote-first or office-first is, as I understand it, much more broadly available than it was. You are given the option to go remote-first and not return to the office at all. Returning to the office is optional.
If you choose to go office-first, then you will be expected to actually be at the office. In that sense, return to the office is mandatory.
The only thing that's really happening is them saying "you need to commit to one approach or the other, and act accordingly". This is understandable, you need to plan office capacity and other such practical considerations
This seems win-win to me. Teams and orgs that consider remote-friendliness important can operate that way, while teams and orgs that don't think that can keep the team colocated. Ultimately, it means the vast majority of people's preferences are accommodated. Worst case, changing teams at Google is very smooth.
If it were truly "optional" for everyone even without manager approval, that's effectively "remote" because some people not being present means the team works in a largely remote fashion, and it also means space planning for expensive offices is very hard and result in office layouts that are not as productive.
For a big company with 100k+ employees, this seems like a good call IMO because it allows all working models to co-exist, and it can easily be tweaked after seeing how RTO goes.
Googlers with assigned desk will be expected to show up to the office. Applications for remote transfers have been available for like six months and in the cases where engineers are unable to work remotely due to their role or their management disapproving, transfers within Google to other teams that are remote-friendly are nearly trivial.
It is mostly orgs like Sales that have hard rules against remote work where the word "mandate" with its connotation of a hard and unpleasant rule makes sense.
That seems weird for outside sales (i.e. large accounts) given you're often near your customers and (in normal times) should be in customer meetings rather than sitting in an office.
No. These are shitty capitalist ploys trying to tell you the above is true when it's blatantly false. And well, they'd work you for no money, but they wouldn't have workers.
If anything, I'd claim to live in a high CoL area while being in the Midwest. They get their quality work, I get my commensurate compensation. Fuck them for thinking otherwise.
Your compensation is not absolute dollars but what you can get for those dollars.
Ideally the same dollar would get you the same everywhere in the world. That is not the case atm.
Instead, people at your new location will provide the same quality of work for fewer dollars, because they see what they can get for those dollars. That is your capitalist competition.
Well, actually it is.
As others mentioned, if Google ignored supply and demand and paid for quality of work only, why would they pay everyone the high rates that were originally set by supply and demand in Silicon Valley? They’d pay a normal living wage for someone in India.
On the other hand, in theory the bottom markets will see their rates rise quickly (because they merged into one wider remote market) if remote is as popular as it apparently is.
15% is still something I consider significant. Why were they denied? Are there people getting preference based on manager or their own personal reputation?
They may have reversed stance after I left, but I'm pretty sure the "15%" number cited is "15% of people that were considered eligible and had their manager support were declined."
Worked for many tier 1 investment banks in the techiest corners of each org and some cases felt like startups with all the shiny new toys everyone else was using vs the dark ages of customized software straight from the nineties or some other entirely-in-house-built abomination in other places.
You need to make sure you aren't replacing them so fast that the median experience level is dropping, but it's certainly the case that the average experience level of the incoming cohort is expected to be lower than the outgoing one.
You see it at institutions, hundreds of individual "low bus factor" risks spread throughout the organization. The company would survive, but it would be a tough time, and a terrible place to work, during a large knowledge exodus.
If you get some talented engineers to join you because of the shortsightedness of Google then kudos to you, and more the loss for Google.
I'm not going back to the office ever there's no need to.. the company I work for has experienced explosive growth since we went remote ..brought on and maintained 100 new hires.
If they try to force me I'll find something else!!
Cities are dying some cause of remote work but aren't we tired of the govt controlling our lives (Biden's remark of all remote workers must go back..ha lmao). Umm the solution is to innovate cities and offer programs for remote workers to come live there for three to six to 12 months ..have a startup that owns buildings in all cities for remote workers to live in and congregate as well let's them jump from town to town every many months. City living Innovation not more govt control/lame ideas is what is needed to spur the economies of cities and their future prosperity.