As a side note, I personally find it hilarious to associate work/life balance with a startup.
I also spent 5 years at a well known startup that went public - I think I averaged nearly 12 hours a day over the 5 years there.
In my experience and from a lot of people I talk to, work-life balance is much better at a large Corp than a startup.
I get to do meaningful work, and my employer REALLY cares about me (the amount of training we get offered is amazing). UK so YMMV.
That’s not to say the DoD is inherently evil from the bottom up. It’s just that the things activists love to hate about FANG (potentially contributing to border control, selling technologies to foreign governments, data collection), the DoD does ten times over.
Take care of No. 1 first. That is you. GOOG folks, please don't cringe at FB. There is no difference.
Normal remote work lets you go out and do fun stuff with friends after hours (which you have more of with no commute), spend more time with your kids (who have been at school for most of the day), or even explore other cities or countries (if you have that kind of remote arrangement).
All the pandemic has shown us is basically all knowledge work can be done remotely, and most sales work too.
Some people enjoy socializing at work.
> All the pandemic has shown us is basically all knowledge work can be done remotely, and most sales work too.
For sales, can be done, but can it win over the face to face sales?
I do. I have small children, don't have a lot of time in the evenings, so work is my main social meeting place (granted, there are weekends with friends, but weekdays are much harder).
During the day, I want to talk to real, physical people, have lunch or coffee with them (probably a cultural thing), and talk about things. I sorely miss it.
While I understand that some people can cope with skyping people all day long 5 days a week and have no physical interactions, I find it incredibly wearing in the long run, and am not sure that most people can. It's a bit like comparing facebook and going to a cafe with friends : sure, both allow social interactions, but the quality of said interactions is vastly different with the remote ones fundamentally lacking.
I'd happily have a day of wfh per week though - perfect for uninterrupted, focused work!
"Everyone would like WFH if they'd truly experienced it the 'correct' way! Anyone who says they don't like it just hasn't done it properly!"
Please just accept that not everyone is exactly like you. Plenty of people really do enjoy the in-person office environment more.
I am in the "will return to the office regularly as soon as I can" crowd, but I don't think the "no true Scotsman" is a fair accusation here. The pandemic situation is different and not a good indicator, and a good chunk of the problems people have are obviously connected to that.
Most of my co-workers feel the opposite from me, but my home is a sea of distractions that I'd rather be doing than sitting at a computer working (and I live alone, so no kids or spouse at home). Instead I could be playing piano, practicing violin, writing music, taking photos, developing film, or 100 other things. When I'm at work, I work (mostly).
Would i prefer in-office if i didn't have to commute? Maybe. The downsides are just not worth the upsides, though. To me.
...just a thought :)
Also, I live 300ft up in the Oakland hills so going out and back in the morning to WFH means I have to climb back up or jut ride in the hills which involves more climbing. Going to work is downhill!
no traffic in the morning, being able to go for walks in the middle of the day, home cooked meals every day, no alarms in the morning (biggest plus imo).
what does this mean exactly? work at any terrible company that does terrible things, as long as the pay is good?
Facebook is probably a net negative for the whole world. If fb would evaporate tomorrow no one would care.
Regardless i'm not questing what Google _was_. I'm commenting on what Google _is_.
Or by “squint” do you mean “close?”
It provided multiple platforms that, like Facebook, optimized user clicks in ways that ended up causing significant harm. Radicalizing extremists and pushing racism, homophobia, misinformation, etc.
One may be objectively worse than the other, but lets not pretend that Google conveniently forgot "Do no evil" until it was notified of it's own actions by the public. Only with its back against the wall did it recognize the problem.
I realize that many people love social media and derive happiness from FB, but it’s just not the case for me and the main reason I couldn’t work there.
I wish I could know which company is which by your comment, but I can't, any could be in any place here.
And your use case for Facebook et al is obviously different than how many others see it. Being the first truly wordwide social network has to count for something, even though we're not sure it was a good idea in the first place. The world is big and people use/like different things, and it's all relative in the end.
Hence wfhbata's comment without any naming, can be seen from both perspectives.