News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Google Plans Large New York City Expansion. Parent comment

Re:Google Plans Large New York City Expansion by TulliusCicero on Thursday November 08, 2018 @07:35AM (#18405814)
> Google is one of the few companies with the resources to try to drastically improve the technology and fix this problem, but they instead decided just to double down on consolidating their staff in big offices. Obviously works for them but it’s a shame.

I'm a googler, and this is completely wrong. Google absolutely wants to fix the remote work issue. Nearly every meeting room in the company is equipped with videoconferencing equipment, and "dialing in" is an accepted practice, with people occasionally dialing in from home being quite common. Hell, they sell their videoconferencing stuff to other companies even, so the monetary incentive is certainly there.

But fully remote work also introduces organizational problems that current tech, at least, does not overcome.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Google Plans Large New York City Expansion by abalos on Thursday November 08, 2018 @07:51AM (#18405874)
Agreed. There's something fundamentally different about contacting someone via a video conference versus the organic nature of a quick chat about something.

This puts remote workers behind quite a ways. My old team was partially located in NYC and partially located in the Bay Area. There was a major difference in inter and intra location interactions and it affected the team in some negative ways.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Google Plans Large New York City Expansion by ghaff on Thursday November 08, 2018 @08:43AM (#18406150)
As a mostly remote worker, that's fair. Just yesterday, I happened to be in the office and bumped into someone and had a quick conversation about something that would otherwise have involved setting up meetings, etc.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Google Plans Large New York City Expansion by iainmerrick on Thursday November 08, 2018 @07:45PM (#18411482)
Google absolutely wants to fix the remote work issue.

But not to the extent of encouraging fully remote work, or even of opening offices in many locations (as they formerly did).

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Google Plans Large New York City Expansion by TulliusCicero on Friday November 09, 2018 @03:28AM (#18413082)
You're confusing "wants to fix" with "believes can be completely solved (in the short or medium term)".
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Google Plans Large New York City Expansion by iainmerrick on Friday November 09, 2018 @06:33AM (#18413749)
Yes, you may be right. I guess what I’m trying to say is that some companies and organizations (Basecamp, Mozilla) embrace remote working and some discourage it, and Google is currently in the latter camp.

I know they use videoconferencing a lot and they even sell it, but they still co-locate teams and they still expect people to come into the office most days, right?

It’s surprising to me that Google in particular is anti-remote given that all their products are so internet-focused. Yes, it’s probably unfair to expect more from them than from others.

[ Parent | on HN ]