The individual employee is not going to be a reliable indicator for any of these questions.
By the same logic implied here, we cannot trust senior management to know what they're doing.
PS - Also Google's measures of productivity are terrible, that's why they keep starting/killing new projects ever other week, and killed their golden goose in their so-called "20-percent rule."
I don't think engineers are the only rational ones, but I think the rational ones in management have noticed that their numbers being meaningful or correct only rarely matters for getting a "yes" or a promotion, so have responded... rationally, since getting useful figures and proving that they're useful is both 1) usually a lot more work, and 2) often not even practically possible.
This is especially true in large corporations, where upper management is very insulated from the realities of line-level work. It is also especially true in most publicly-traded corporations, where upper management is almost invariably going to care more about the trendline in the company's stock price than in their actual productivity, or even in the well-being of their workers.
The interests of engineers are often extremely detached from whether development is cost effective and maintainable by others.
The part that's stupid is everyone, even the ones who know better, pretending a bunch of bad statistics and such aren't bad, but if the suits in the room are nodding along you damn well better not point that out. People succeeding in the management track either actually are bad at understanding these things, or (plenty often) do understand but also know to STFU about it.
This is factually untrue. The only difference is Google is much larger, making it harder to launch new products.
The reality is that neither is probably a WFH issue as a first-order effect.
I dunno, seems like they are doing ok at their jobs....
They didn’t build the ship, they’re just passengers.
Hence why most companies fall out of the S&P 500 as quickly as they rise. If you think Google is going to stay on top forever you’re in for a rude awakening.
And even among those who are genuinely trying to see that the business does well for years to come, rather than the next three months and then who cares, even among the ones of them who are genuinely decent at managing a product, far too few understand the positive relationship between how you treat your employees and what you get out of them.
Because we've spent decades in this country being sold the idea that good management means forcing workers to work more hours, under tighter control, because "workers" are stupid, lazy, and/or malicious, and it is "managers" who really know how to do things right, by the very definition of their jobs.
America is one of the best countries in the world, therefore its leadership has to be smart and competent.
I can think of no product at google that is not overshadowed by their policy of non-support. The culture that leads to their innovation also informs trust. If there is any such thing as "too innovative" then google is it.
This is why Azure is doing so much better than google in cloud computing despite the fact that google invented modern cloud computing. People trust Microsoft to support their products.
And management can? Please, tell me how. Give me metrics and methods for measurement that can effectively capture productivity. What's the KPI for "strong corporate culture" or "innovation"?
Because if we can't rely on individual experiences, then clearly the only other option is systemic measurements, so please, tell me how!
Also, not all measurements should be shared. Let’s say that they have data showing that new hire productivity and skill growth is much lower when senior engineers are WFH. They’re not going to share that data when forcing senior engineers to be in the office, since it could foment resentment of junior staff.
So then why shouldn't we trust individual experiences? What's the evidence that those reports are not reliable while management perceptions are if this stuff isn't measurable?
> Let’s say that they have data showing that new hire productivity and skill growth is much lower when senior engineers are WFH. They’re not going to share that data when forcing senior engineers to be in the office, since it could foment resentment of junior staff.
They're already fomenting resentment by making a decision to force people back to work without any evidence to justify it.
That's somehow better?
BTW, I'm not saying they're wrong! They might be completely right. But to disregard individual experience while trusting management is measuring the right things is, frankly, pretty naive. The reality is management is as much about personal beliefs, gut instinct, and good ol' fashion tradition as anything else.
I suspect it's far more likely that management at Google simply doesn't like the idea of fully remote employees, not based on any specific data points, but simply because that's their preference. But assuming that's true, it's better to simply admit that then to make pseudo-scientific arguments to justify those preexisting beliefs.
There's another term for that: Confirmation bias.
That's fine, but let's not pretend your opinion is any more valid than anyone else's, including the individual employees who feel differently.
The reality is no one, here, is actually basing their opinion on data. Absent that this is basically faith. Which is great 'cuz then we can all just agree to disagree. ;)
I like this question. Let’s say that we can create a list of 10 quantitative measures of the story, all binary and all comparative, e.g. which has the best pacing? which makes the best use of supporting characters? Now we can total up the answers and produce a number, e.g. Macbeth is better than the Da Vinci Code in 30% of our measures.
You could repeat this process pair-wise with lots of books and produce a ranking.
Positive or negative?
https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-...
Some ammunition for the opposition: this HBR article indicates that companies who managed the transition to remote work the best increased their productivity during the pandemic. So, a question I'd want to ask if my hypothetical boss said "back to the office everybody!" would be why we hadn't been able to adapt as well as the best of our competitors, and why we didn't want to learn from them and get that productivity boost.
https://hbr.org/2020/12/the-pandemic-is-widening-a-corporate...
Management went over this in the virtual all-hands meeting. They acknowledged all the reports - 2020 being "The Best Year for The Company, Ever", 2021 on the same road. Then concluded with: "We don't like seeing all that empty office space, so everyone will be brought back as soon as possible". I'm not paraphrasing - they literally said they don't like empty offices.
It is partly true, because not going to work and interacting with people all day will make you have less regrets about leaving for another company. This is not generally a huge factor (compared to, say, salary), but it exists.
Managers with a lot of company cult thinking also believe that you get more attached to the company if they can see you everyday.
At my company they are shocked that engineering talent is leaving despite the great financials results, and are trying to find an explanation. Apparently the "no raises this year" policy they set 6 months ago did not enter their radar.
Certainly not the case for everyone. Many people are struggling to be productive at home, alone. Jobs that require more coordination are also at risk of slowing down.
WFH is great for some, but it’s not a panacea.
Not to mention the additional stress and isolation that comes from all of the pandemic management measures, and the omnipresent low level fear. Honestly if WFH has even remained steady with in office in this hostile environment to me that is a pretty big indicator it is better for businesses.
I actually sat in a management meeting not so long ago, where we all agreed that efficiency and productivity was higher than before (according to our metrics) – and still, one of the people present said that they missed being able to just pop up, look over direct reports' shoulders, etc.
The rest of us confronted them with the fact that all of us – they too – had celebrated our progress moments earlier, and agreed employees delivered better than ever, but we were still unable to totally persuade them.
I find that infuriating, and kind of frightening.
Not only have managers all over the world done things like stuff people into open floor plans (despite the fact that it was never backed by science, and its selling points are now actually refuted by science), and thought that there is something "special" about physical co-location (ignoring the possibilities of video-conferencing for fifty years);
They are now actively going against better knowledge because of their own need for the feeling of control (which they'll never achieve, of course – slackers will slack anywhere), and will continue to use butts in chairs as a metric.
Sadly, I think this is a huge part of it. Regardless of productivity, "I just want to stand up over my empire and hear the bustle of people in my org talking and doing! Visibly see the movement and activity of My People physically surrounding me, doing Business Things!"
I feel like this should be taken with a grain of salt, depending on what your bubble looks like.
That’s bound to happen when you have large workforces. You have groups of people who make it so that productive people can’t have nice things. A kind of tragedy of the commons.
The key word is "discovery" not "remote." Measure and reward good workers, identify and help (or fire) bad workers. Is physically watching where the bodies are still the best we can do here?
Was he WFH? Nope. He was running these teams from his desk in the cubicle farm. And he was relatively open about it too with management. But he knew so much that everyone kept him around.
Getting bent out of shape when workers do it is just classist bullshit.
On the other hand, there's a lot more/better self-service capabilities these days and unless you have a dedicated admin who really knows you, having someone else do something for you can be more trouble than it's worth.
Examples: is it in the company's best interest for an expensive developer to spend a paid hour getting some time-off set up, using company processes, rather than two minutes sending an email? If the company switches from Asana to Jira, say, or (god forbid) one developer needs to use multiple such tools because they're working for clients with certain preferences, or across teams in an org that have different tools, is all the switching time, plus the actual day-to-day overhead of using either of those systems, for every single developer, a great use of company money? Or would it be better to have a standard interface for all those administrative tools (i.e. a person)? Someone to handle formatting and proofreading proposals, maybe. All that kind of stuff that you 100% do not need someone with a CS degree and 10+ years of development experience to do.
That sort of thing was common when I was a product manager a couple of decades back. Probably each supported more people than that but they handled a lot of annoying administrivia--albeit as part of much more paper-based manual workflows.
Taxes? Could be that municipalities gave them huge tax write-offs assuming they would bring lots of jobs to the area, and now they may have to write all that off if they don't bring people back.
Management is also terrified of not having hands/eyes on people. They are already so disconnected from people and have no concept of how to manage remote work, that they literally feel powerless without an office to monitor/control their workers in. They can monitor when you sit down at your desk, monitor your internet access, phone calls, structure meetings, and enforce culture. Remote work forces them to admit that they won't have nearly as much control over their workforce.
Google wants to be more than just a job to its employees. They want "being a Googler" to be a part of their employees life and part of their identity. (I'm not saying this as criticism.)
So, what would Google prefer: An upset Googler, or a happy productive person who is employed by Google? I can see why it might be easier to retain the former than the latter. Especially if they think this is a temporary thing that will blow over, and they might be right.
I feel that the latter are the type of managers who want everyone back in the office.
I'm going to stay WFH, if my org want to keep me, that will be a requirement. My quality of life has jumped and I'm not moving back to a high COL city just because a manager wants facetime.
Out of curiosity, how many of the people you have spoken to have kids? From my perspective, it seems the people without kids seem to handle working from home okay, but the ones with younger kids at home seem to struggle a lot.
I first joked with my wife about finally being able to have sex during meetings at the start of the WFH mandate, but it actually turned out to be more about changing diapers during meetings, and general background screaming for most of the day.
Additionally, it emptied the pipeline. We implemented a lot of work that was queued up, but we are now stalling on product design and engineering design approvals where coordination and communication is key.
The increase in productivity is achievable on the short term, but not long-term. My productivity this year has fallen off a cliff.
I noticed that some of my colleagues do almost nothing since their supervisors are not checking. I definitely work less and am less productive, too. At least that's my feeling.
Src: Located and working in bay area at FAANG company
But I do think company leadership likes the psychological aspect of everyone being in the office and are willing to take both a cost and productivity hit to fulfill this need.
The Google culture and leadership, right or wrong, hold on to the belief that the spaces they cultivate, do more than just enhance productivity. For example, they believe that (regardless of how rare it may be) their spaces create opportunities for teams to bump into each other and build solutions/products out of that.
That could be a problem over time unless people can met at the office again in some form and go to conferences. Or some remote form of that would be needed.
The "choice" is whether to work in the office, or remotely, or a few days of each. Everyone gets what they want!
Flexibility in this context tends to mean "all employees must do some of each every week." Worst of both worlds.
Concentrated vs diffuse costs:
Return to normal:
Labor productivity there is no doubt. Overall productivity is something else entirely, since it is optimized by reducing the amount of labor needed. I've seen projects being spared what would have been _months_ of useless labor because the right person was walking back from his coffee break and overheard some discussion he had an insight about.
It's just an annecdote of course, but it's hard to evaluate the evolution of overall productivity when WFH. Especially since it depends on the existing culture of the company, so even success stories like Gitlab can't be used as a proof of anything.
Whats more:
Late last year experienced search quality increased ever so slightly for me at least.
Granted Google is not my default search engine anymore so I cannot say for sure but I still consult it sometimes. (The quality on Google and DDG has been about the same for me but it is easier to go from DDG and back than the other way around.)
You can think of it as a filter for identifying easy to control employees.
What possible upside could there be that justifies forcing the issue and hurting morale by pissing so many people off? Sure, maybe there's an argument that a fully remote company has a hard time propagating a coherent corporate culture. But it seems like if you let everyone choose, it'd be 50/50 in-person vs. WFH. So, even if you give your employees full flexibility, you'll still wind up with decently full offices that can train junior people, promulgate a corporate culture, etc.