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Comment by sitkack | Hacker News Reader

Depending on the org, most Google employees are already part of a distributed team. This is nothing but making management appear functional and bean counters that manage the buildings feel like their buildings are being used.

Has zero to do with productivity.

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Or they’re legitimately seeing the dire condition Google has been finding itself in with the lack of product success and increasing existential threats of LLM’s, the declining health of the open web from which they derive their profits, etc etc, and taking a hard look in the bloat they have in their existing workforce.

If management is heavily signaling they don’t want remote work, believe them. When the layoffs come, the remote workers will be very close to the front of the line to get the axe.

The number of laid off techworkers that understand the juiciest parts of their former employers market that are now doing their own thing is significant.

Layoffs will not help these tech giants.

The political and technical structures inside of Big Tech are largely performative, vast swaths of these orgs have literally no skin in the game.

Skin in the Game | Nassim Nicholas Taleb https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uv6KLbkvua8

Nodding strongly in agreement as somebody who resigned Big Tech to start my own thing and hired remote first to get premium talent.

That’s the other part of startups wanting remote - you get WAY more access to talent compared to a few years ago when remote-first was weird and scary.

Likewise, Big Tech haven’t had to compete for so long they forgot the number one rule is to keep the talent happy.

Personally, I’m a lot happier now than I was with a big fancy level at a Mega Co.

"Something must be done, this is something..."?

Not saying I agree with it, just that it’s not the idle threat OP was making it out to be… if the bean counters who are saying “something must be done” are actually in charge, maybe it doesn’t matter whether it’s really about performance…

I am not saying the threat is idle. I am saying the action is unwarranted, the performative play is real for all levels. Sundar is larping as a leader. He is at best a substitute teacher.

If a company is trying to make me dance like a monkey, I would rather get laid off. Either they appreciate productivity, or I will be happy to be out of there.

They are getting their lunch eaten by Microsoft which allows remote. Azure is killing gcloud, Office365 is dominating GSuite. Not to mention msft owning 49% of openAi. Google needs to fire their leadership since it’s strategy failures and not tactical errors.

Gcp is profitable, azure is not

Google invented LLMs

Microsoft can't even build its own browser

I don't think Google has anything to worry about, but it's funny to see how widespread this sentiment is. Just goes to show how good of a story teller Satya is.

GCP doesn't have Github as a funnel.

Google also invented "cloud" and is in last place. Invention counts for little.

Google is over-run with MBAs who are busy complecting and burning their employer to the ground while cycling back into the competition (Azure and AWS).

> Google also invented "cloud"

Wait what? Because I'm pretty sure aws predates gcp by quite a few years. And if you mean the marketing word "cloud", I think that's false as well.

Edit: ec2 has been around since 2006

Google's internal machine provisioning model was already automated and accessible via an API, it would have been recognizable as a "cloud", but it was internal only. The kernel changes that enabled OpenVZ and Docker were done by Google engineers.

In the same way OpenAI shipped a business on transfomers (invented by Google). Google invents stuff, but then is last to its own party.

Looks like GCP has existed since 2008, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Cloud_Platform

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cgroups

https://ai.googleblog.com/2017/08/transformer-novel-neural-n...

They are the xerox parc of the 2000s.

Or the Ramones of the 70s. They play a show and everyone in the audience goes home and starts a punk band and becomes wildly more successful (across multiple definitions of “success”).

> Gcp is profitable, azure is not

Asserting that GCP is profitable while Azure is not doesn't necessarily determine their respective successes. A company might reinvest all its revenue back into growth and innovation, hence posting zero profit - this doesn't signify poor performance. Conversely, a company reporting a profit could potentially be stagnating, inflating profits to appease shareholders potentially seeking to exit. Profitability alone isn't a comprehensive measure of a company's health or potential.

> Google invented LLMs

Poor argument. E.g. Xerox invented GUI, where are they now?

Reinvesting profits doesn't mean you didn't have profits. Msft, aapl, goog, meta all reinvest profits in new ventures. Only Amazon can't manage to make a buck and tries to pass it off as reinvestment.

Wrt azure vs gcp, I just don't think you can say azure is "killing it" when it's a loss leader for the company. Gcp has proven it can operate profitably, we don't know if azure ever will. Right now its business model approximates Uber.

Google's condition is due to jaw droppingly incompetent management. Not the engineers.

I buy that... but real talk, there's gotta be a ton of bloat in the engineering org, no?

I've never worked at Google but I know shitloads of Googlers. And listening to their work problems... it sounds like engineers outnumber the other functions like 10:1 (at a minimum) but still produce mind-bogglingly slow estimates for the simplest shit. Like... 9 months to create a settings page. 6 months to change a few pages cumulatively simpler than a CRUD app.

Is it the systems they have to work with? The approvals to connect to this or that? Is everything within Eng bureaucratized to fucking hell and back? Or are >50% of them completely faking it and utterly useless? What the hell's going on there?

Edit: for context... yes, the abstracted examples I'm giving are coming for the perspective of PM / Design / Marketing folks. And when I ask my Eng Googler friends they get awkward and cagey and seem to not want to say anything mean about anyone.

All of the above. Sometimes the system you need to change was written six years ago by an intern from another team that was defragged, in a framework that isn't supported anymore, and everyone keeps piling the tech debt higher.

Some parts of Eng are mind-blowingly incompetent. Google is remarkable not for "hiring the best people" but for how widely the quality varies by org. Some orgs have a reputation for incompetence.

Security and Privacy is a great example. Half the org is fanatical about protecting users, smart, effective, the works...and the other half is fanatical about ticking the right boxes on their forms and putting roadblocks in front of product teams because it makes them look important. Try getting something done when someone from the second group is paying attention to you, and yeah, it'll take nine months to launch a settings page.

Yes, there's bloat, but it's not as simple as "there are too many people so MMM ruins your productivity".

OpenAI is all in office and running circles around Google.

Yes, Google would have turned the corner if they also had everyone in the office.

That's just deflection. It's like saying, you'll become rich if you start wearing suits.

> they’re legitimately seeing the dire condition Google has been finding itself in with the lack of product success and increasing existential threats of LLM’s, the declining health of the open web from which they derive their profits, etc

<vent>

And, leaping into action, carrying the banner of innovation, they're declaring their bold vision of the future: getting sneezed on 20 times a day while attending the exact same meetings as before.

Plus, many people get an extra bonus in this future: the addition of 1-3 hours of commute time per day. (Thanks to terrible traffic in every single part of the Bay Area, this is true for many more people than you might imagine.) Time entirely wasted, that neither their family nor their business will benefit from.

The saddest part of this stupidity is that all teams still have to collaborate globally anyway. So everyone's still going to spend time dialing into meetings, fumbling with microphones, and running into A/V issues — except now it'll be compounded by the fact that there'll never be a meeting room available, and all the equipment will be covered in a fine layer of snot from everyone sneezing on everything.

The fundamental issue with the "RTO or not" question is not the debates about the science of productivity. It's simply the fact that any business choosing to spend time on this is already displaying a failure of judgment and lack of focus.

Entire markets are getting overturned by the arrival of AI, and these people are navel-gazing about desk occupancy rates.

</vent>

I find this kind of debate can be polarizing because people have such different mindsets and perspectives on the world. If you view the office as just a “fine layer of snot”, I can only imagine what you think of the subway, or a mall. But people sneezing and fighting traffic aren’t critiques of the office, they’re critiques of leaving your house and going outside…

We have immune systems for a reason, and fear of illness (without it coming from your doctor) is not a good reason to be against RTO. People get sick all the time, it’s a normal and necessary process to build our natural immunity. I worry about the damage covid did in making people still paranoid about going in public (e.g. people who continue to feel the need to wear masks today without a medical reason).

You imply there’s no value to being in person, but would you really rather catch up with friends over zoom rather than over dinner? Call someone over FaceTime rather than get coffee and go on a walk? Work relationships matter, sharing 3D space allows people to be more creative and collaborative, and companies are recognizing that. Google seems like the last company that would make people come back to the office without doing their homework, there’s clearly data showing that fully remote employees are falling behind.

> Work relationships matter, sharing 3D space allows people to be more creative and collaborative, and companies are recognizing that. Google seems like the last company that would make people come back to the office without doing their homework, there’s clearly data showing that fully remote employees are falling behind.

A couple things I wanted to point out when reading this:

- RTO does not imply sharing a 3D space with those you collaborate with (e.g. distributed teams).

- There is no data that proves that in-person work is more "creative" or "collaborative", simply because it's not measurable.

- You assume Google's intentions to always driven by data rather than appealing to stakeholders.

- RTO is entirely about sharing 3D spaces with those you collaborate, agree that if the team you work directly with is distributed there’s little value to RTO to me, direct team in office and other teams distributed seems more common

- there is data: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04643-y

- they are not mutually exclusive, I do very much assume google uses data AND appeals to stakeholder value. I don’t hold the view that stakeholder value is purely maximizing productivity, I think google does their homework before making big decisions.

This is an internet comment section. "Going outside" is always an unpopular opinion here. Also, many of the people here are younger, don't have kids, think they never will, think they'll never have to manage people etc.

These aren't going to be particularly productive, unfortunately.

When I hear company is calling workers back to office, it means things are going bad and insecure managers want to show they can whip the workers to deliver. Like a last ditch effort.

If I was in that situation, as a remote worker, I'd start looking for a new job.

> Or they’re legitimately seeing the dire condition Google has been finding itself in

That predates wfh by like 5 years though

If we are totally honest though, people working in a google office generally have fewer private distractions like porn, taking naps on a sofa, watching Succession, playing with their cat etc. Reading the discussion on Blind is very illuminating on this, like one guy claiming to have frequent sex with his wife during the workday.

That's all bogus excuses. If you suck at work you will get fired. If you are producing to the expected point you will retain your job.

I've heard no shortage of stories from coworkers at big-tech or fancy startups in the past couple of years where line-level managers simply aren't able to make the tough decisions.

A third of your team is getting practically nothing done? Are you having the tough conversations that need to happen? Or do you not want to rock the boat (it might not look great on you, either, especially if your peer managers aren't taking things seriously).

You're right, you can't hide forever. People do get fired. And in a couple cases this has ultimately resulted in the managers getting fired too when higher-ups realized the sheer obviousness of "they aren't doing a single thing" that was being ignored.

Failures all around, but I get why one would say "we didn't have this level of complete abdication back when people were in the office" and take that as the easy solution rather than trying to make huge swaths of both their managers and employees get way better discipline, extremely quickly.

Oh how awful someone uses their life to have sex rather than sit in a dark cubicle being bored out of their mind, hoping time will pass until the next paycheck comes in. Such better way of living.

I find it funny how people equate office = 10hr hard and efficient work vs WFH = 2 mins of work, rest watching tv and having sex.

The truth is people do as much work as they're motivated to do and as much as they have to do. There's teams at Google who never are allowed to launch anything due to corporate bullshit politics. I have a friend who has been there 15 years, maybe one or two of his small feature products launched, dozens got cancelled. Like a good soldier he goes to the office because he feeds his family with Google dollars. That's it.

I don't understand what having sex with your partner has to do with work, unless it's directly interfering with it. In fact it probably makes your work better.

I'm going to assume the people complaining about this don't have much sex.

It's a good extreme example of something that the work place really claims that is way out of the bounds of what they expect you to do during work. On top of that, it's considered to be less appropriate than gossiping at the water cooler.

If an employee is given an hour lunch break off campus, and they use it to have sex, the only reason I can understand someone being mad is if they're jealous. Substitute {having sex} with {driving aimlessly} to {eating lunch} and it should be the same thing to the employer - the employee is off campus and not subject to workplace expectations.

If you're getting your work done even when you take mid-day sex breaks, why is that the company's business? Employers claim to be able to measure productivity to give raises and fire unproductive employees, but they somehow can't figure out if someone working from home is productive? Do managers need to physically look over an employee's shoulder to figure out if he's productive?

"Work" is not always a production quota assigned by the local commissar.

I agree that working from home can be more productive but your argument is not convincing on its own.

If you need to be in an office to be able to focus on work (or healthy supplements to work, like exercise and sex with your partner) instead of taking naps or bingeing junk, you have bigger problems, like immaturity, lack of personal discipline, burnout / alienation, and/or severe depression. Being in the office won't fix any of those things - it will mask them in an unhealthy way that will do neither you nor your loved ones any favors in the long run.

> like one guy claiming to have frequent sex with his wife during the workday.

This would be more believable if he’d said girlfriend.

> Depending on the org, most Google employees are already part of a distributed team

citation needed

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