But of course, almost none of these companies are actually paying the people who live further away more, it's just management trying to enforce their will over the "peons".

Our company is trying to force everyone back into the office 5 days a week. Their arguments for doing so were "projects have been late" and pointed at projects that were delayed due to unrelated external supplier reasons as justification.

They claim the benefit of people paying less to heat their houses, as though people don't have pets/family.

My working theory is that the upper management's jobs are more boring, and harder to coast on, when they can't "count heads" and have the illusion of progress. It's really exposed good and bad managers this past 1.5 years.

In theory, this is exactly what unions are supposed to be for, I guess we'll see from this if the ones that are there, are worth anything.

The problem is too many upper managers think their role should be tactical. They want frequent status reports to know if their long term vision is going to be met, and then any area it doesn't match up, rather than modify the vision, or seek to empower people to change things up to deliver on the vision, they'll instead choose to get involved. This despite not really having the details of why things are working or not working; this is where micromanagement comes in, daily status reports and other time sucks, etc.

But staying strategic and unblocking people below them can look like doing little. Inaction in the face of delays and things, even when warranted, may still look and feel bad to them, and so rather than have an org wide retro or similar to figure out what happened and if/how to avoid it in the future, they'll instead reason "something must be done!" at which point anything counts as something. Remote work is an easy target; it was an unplanned change forced upon them, so blaming issues on it means no one actually gets blamed.

Everyone, no matter how many "executives" or "vices" in their title, is simply reacting to what the person above them is on about that day. Everyone is reacting. No one is planning, unless they've just been asked for a plan to present "next week". Then they will have a portion of the plan to assign you, but it will already be narrowly defined per what the boss's boss has already indicated they're expecting to see. And you'll need to complete it in two days, so there are a few days to make changes. I was never privy to any long range planning, and I came to realize that's because if there was any of that happening (I'm very skeptical) it had to be happening at the board of directors level.

"The problem is too many upper managers think their role should be tactical. "

So this is a little bit mythologizing and there's a couple problems with this perception:

1) Everything is operational, and operations require material leadership at every level, there is no escaping it. Meaning, that there's a very material 'hands-on' component to even in higher level leadership.

The constancy of major decisions can have greater consequences and there are many more moving pieces, so it's hard.

Putting out fires and dealing with these grinding can easily overwhelm leaders but that's the reality of it, always.

Execs should usually have a much broader perspective that can help and guide decisions making.

Obviously, too much micro detail can be a problem, but that should be addressed by leadership that is willing to just listen and react accordingly.

I've been overridden by 'bad executive fiat' o occasion ... but also made forays where I shouldn't have because I didn't have the bigger picture.

2) Strategy is the most overused concept in all of business. While it's an important function it's usually a collective pursuit, involves input from various places - and most importantly, depends on details, i.e. downward facing.

Was Steve Jobs a relaxed, high level person setting strategy? Letting the details be worked out?

Musk?

Ford?

Bezos?

Not really.

There's a thoughtless comment floating here that points to 'Executives Asking Bad Questions To Seem Important' which is mostly wrong. They're asking questions to become informed. Some details matter, some don't but informing execs with a material understanding of the situation is a fundamental aspect of organizational communication.

The Tom Hanks film Greyhound is a neat study in that (He's the captain of a US ship leading a convoy in the Atlantic in WW2 getting hunted by German UBoats) - it's fully real time, you see a commander in the hot seat, and tons of activity around him. It's kind of interesting to see how information is propagated up and down and at what details. Obviously they're not building products.

Strategy, in the end, if it's done well should seem fairly obvious, even boring.

We have such lofty expectations of the term, that we expect 'enlightened divination' out of it, but more often than not, the result of good strategy should be a product roadmap that takes into rational consideration the aspects of market dynamics.

I think that having some creative analysts in a staff position to help the CEO maintain a broad perspective and take into consideration the more interesting market trends we often associate with the word 'strategy' is probably enough.

In my experience, I believe that in any company ... there is probably enough collective insight in the organization to set an appropriate strategy, it could only communications could work effectively.

That said, good execs are rare, and employees that are able to wrap their heads around the challenges that upper management faces are just as rare.

Finally ... the over/under managing issue is a really hard one, there are so many factors there.

But, you mention you've been overridden by bad executive fiat on occasion, and also made forays where you shouldn't have because you didn't have the bigger picture. The 'right' course of action to address both of those as your manager would be to make sure you understand the bigger picture, and then to let you (or whoever bears the effect of the decision) make the decision, not to make it for you, nor to let you stumble blindly into a bad one.

In terms of Jobs, Musk, Ford, Bezos, strategy informs tactics, and tactics inform strategy; as you say, you have to ask questions and seek to understand; you also need to communicate and help people connect the dots. But that's different than daily status reports and directives. Seeking to understand the why, rather than endlessly try and stay up to date of the what, is the goal. If you've built a healthy org, they'll raise up concerns about the what when they need to; even when they do, the fix for a bad situation is never focusing on the situation ("still in the hole?" "yep"), it's helping navigate a way out of it ("quit digging; here's a ladder, our new goal is climbing out"), and then figure out how to avoid it in the future ("how did we get in that hole? Why did we keep digging ourselves deeper? WHERE DID ALL THESE SHOVELS COME FROM?!").

And, yes, strategy is often boring and predictable; given the same knowledge, the same set of inputs, most people would make the same decision. It's one reason why I don't think executive pay is justified; I'm not intending to mythologize it or something. Just point out that as you climb a management hierarchy, your concerns move along the strategy/tactical axis toward the strategy side, and that oftentimes bad, poorly informed decisions are due to execs moving too far toward the tactical.

So many issues transcend the narrow scope of some product, which is why 'the effect' as you say, generally goes pretty far, meaning, executive leadership input which is essentially necessary.

It's also a good example of how circumstances can create existential scenarios that have nothing to do with classical strategy and yet take up so much time and be pretty important to a companies evolution.

To me, strategic issues like acquisitions, major product extensions or internalizing parts of the supply chain (i.e. Apple doing cars, their new ASIC chips) are big, CEO level things, those are not general executive strategic things.

The VP at Apple in charge of desktop software products has a 'strategy' that is not going to remotely sound like a 'strategy'.

I believe that the iPhone, since it's inception, has evolved along the lines of efficient product operations, not strategy. Or rather, their 'strategy' would be summarized by choosing 1-3 major consumer issues to focus on, having a new physical design to support that, and all of the marketing, carrier sales, ops and production issues resonating efficiently around it. Their 'strategy' is in a way just 'effective and coordinated product, product marketing, manufacturing, marketing operations' etc..

My reply still stands. "Hey soandso, we need to change our persistence strategy for this information due to regulatory compliance" "Uh, okay. What are the specifics?" "I'm not entirely sure; I've already reached out to soandso in legal/whatever to let them know we're working on this, reach out to them" "Got it"

You haven't been blindsided, nor have you been told what to do by fiat; you've been informed about a new stakeholder and been empowered to collect requirements from them.

'The situation' involved legal overview of ambiguous legal statutes, to the point wherein we had to engage specialized, outside law firms. Even just making that determination, and the wherewithal to know hat we needed outside help, the type of help, the firm to use ... way beyond me. We're dealing with a government agency using those 'backdoor' channels within the bureaucracy, very sensitive, political, relationship based.

In that context, the 'product part' (my job) was frankly the easiest, most obvious thing. It was all of the 'other things' that made it very difficult to navigate.

In the other anecdote, where I was 'blindsided' by an executive requiring a specific thing for a product without much discussion, there were broader issues at play, I think your assessment of 'context' might have helped, but even then, it still would have required coordination.

So these things all touch each other, and where they do, there's an VP involved, having to make decisions, every day.

I'm really wary of some of the commentary here that is dismissive of the kind of work executives do, I think those comments lack a kind of organizational maturity. Director and VP level jobs are the most brutal kinds of work, they're very stressful and operationally oriented, they are not these 'big office grand strategy' type jobs that I think maybe some people think they are. Though obviously 'it depends'.

I would not call "telling me what/how to do something in an area I am completely lost in" as "by fiat". By fiat implies they're telling you what/how to do something by the authority in their title.

And when it comes to giving details, I am not trying to say there isn't coordination or similar involved. This, again, has to do with the level of delegation. There are 10 I've seen discussed in coaching literature, and they range from "I am literally telling you ever step to take", up to "I gave you a broad desire I have, and now I walk away". What is right in a given situation varies, but the way you figure out what amount is right is by having a respectful conversation.

But I agree, operating at that level is not cushy. At the same time, I don't think it has to be as hard as it oftentimes is...but I think that to be true at every level. When a given position is really hard, it's because of bad management above them, I've generally found, but I've not observed many C-levels so can't comment there.

> They're asking questions to become informed. Some details matter

This is true, but like you say -

> That said, good execs are rare

and the difference, in these meetings between the good asking probing questions and the bad doing it out of unaware self-justification in this case naively look somewhat the same. To go back to broad strokes, it seems easy to convince yourself that once the dysfunction sets in - that as good/motivated people leave over lack of being able to make progress, it's easier to maintain the dysfunction than fix it.

I'm in a part-academic, part-business company associated with a national lab, which means that commercial pressures towards growth are somewhat missing or ill-defined. There are lots of good people who truly believe in what they are doing, but it remains a truth that it's a lot easier to just move people around or let their contracts play out (if not permanent) than fire them, and there is clearly a reticence to promote useful or "essential" people out of the job where they are supporting things more critically that their position technically describes.

a product roadmap that takes into rational consideration the aspects of market dynamics.

If your company is looking to make incremental improvements and not trying to do anything innovative, I agree.

If you’re building the first smart phone where there exists no “roadmap” or “rational consideration”, then it’s neither going to be obvious or boring.

IIRC, that was already true for business customers before the iPhone.

> There were other mass market smartphones even then; what the iphone brought was UX (so kudos for Jobs for hiring Jony Ive) and an app store (so kudos for Jobs either for recognizing the benefit of allowing others to do the work to extend the iphone's software capabilities, or for hiring someone who did).

IIRC, the previous smartphone brought email, what the iPhone brought was email and the Web. With regard to the app store, I'm not sure if Jobs really deserves much kudos for accepting what users were already doing with their devices rather than continuing to try to force his original vision (first party native apps and web apps only, no third party native apps).

"what the iPhone brought was email and the Web" - So I never mentioned email re: the iPhone, that was supported back in the first smartphone in 92. For the web, I saw an article that mentioned that, but that doesn't jibe with what I remember or can find elsewhere. There were definitely phones that allowed you to browse the web, as early as the Nokia 9000 Communicator. I think it was the first to have 'unlimited' internet plans due to their partnership with AT&T, but I'm not sure that's nearly as convincing an innovation as 'the web'. Maybe the fact that mobile Safari had a look and feel similar to desktop Safari.

I list the app store from https://time.com/4837176/iphone-10th-anniversary/ and https://www.vox.com/2017/6/26/15821652/iphone-apple-10-year-... (though to be fair, the latter also includes the web), and because it jibes with my own recollections; I don't recollect app stores before the iPhone (though it came after launch). Yes, I remember user customizations, but not an official, searchable repository of them.

The Web and mail experience on ipod touch was simply great, not sure I could explain it better than 'just great'. Nothing world shattering, but it seemed the thing was just natural for surfing and emails. And music of course (but heh, ipod). Didn't care about apps, or anything (or plants vs zombie was a great fun time waster). The thing was thin, nice to hold, nice large screen, capacitive keyboard and... So much better than my n900 or my palmshits for Web and personal email. No 3g then! Just WiFi. It was a simple, nice blend.

As soon as I got hooked up on this, next phone-break I bought... A galaxy s2 then stayed android (mostly because iTunes, iTunes and iTunes, which I hated as much as I can hate any software... Talk about learned helplessness...).

The original ipod touch was the best Web terminal at that time, I think.

My understanding is that "the web" on mobile phones was crippled and unappealing prior to the iPhone. Sure you could "use" it, but most people didn't want to. In 2007 the web was on the desktop, and the iPhone bringing a desktop-like experience to a phone was a game-changer.

>Chris DeSalvo’s reaction to the iPhone was immediate and visceral. “As a consumer I was blown away. I wanted one immediately. But as a Google engineer, I thought ‘We’re going to have to start over.’”

“What we had suddenly looked just so . . . nineties,” DeSalvo said. “It’s just one of those things that are obvious when you see it.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/the-d...

So who built the first smartphone?

It was probably Nokia. And what happened to them?

BlackBerry? They were the one's that made Google and Apple pay attention, because they built the first real baseline use cases for data networks. But was that even a smartphone?

Of course, the iPhone was not the first smartphone, but it was a breakthrough of sorts, but if we leave that product - that aside, how many companies can you think of that generally create this level of 'breakthrough' product?

Almost none.

'Disruption' almost always comes from smaller, newer companies, where there is a fundamentally new strategy that is at the core of the companies existence, i.e. it's inherent in the nature of the company itself.

The reason you might misunderstand this is likely due to the fact that popular understanding of the business world is completely skewed towards interesting and novel companies and technology.

'Business' is not what we see on TechCrunch or even the more classical business press really. The Economy is mostly made up of classical companies of varying sizes wherein my comments apply even more appropriately.

Also not really.

Only rarely that gambit doesn't work, the sacrifice ritual is performed, and the manager gets a new, even better gig elsewhere.

I've had my manager change out above me, and the difference has been night and day. The good ones gave me a defined goal, then stayed out of my way, yes, but they also listened when I raised concerns, and brought me answers and solutions, and provided cover when I needed it. They made my job easier. The bad ones made my job harder.

A lot of upper management jobs consist solely of attending meetings for projects they are only vaguely aware of so that they can ask questions about irrelevant things, interrupting people who are trying to get work done to ask them how long the work they were doing before being interrupted will take to do (more time now that I've been interrupted again, thanks) and other needless tasks.

I mean, _explicitly_ this, to the point that I almost included it in the initial reply. The reason they think no projects have moved is that they can't sit in endless, pointless meetings making unhelpful suggestions to feel justified. Meanwhile, the scientists and developers who actually build things haven't been pulled all over the research campus to sit in these pointless meetings all day any more, so the "real" work being done, and incident response timing, has drastically improved.

Literally no projects have run any later than they always did (by initial plans, at least, they normally tended to restrospectively "move the goalposts" so that historically past projects are defined as having delivered "on time"), but this is being used as the primary justification for forcing everyone back in, full-time, from september.

Maybe I'm just exposing the dysfunction of my hybrid academic/industry working place, at this point. We had trouble recruiting before, will be interesting to see how many people leave because of this; informally many are searching for alternative employment.

Sadly this is all too common. It's the case in my large publicly traded company. Was the same when I was in 5-20 person startups. Our society needs people to have jobs so they can keep propping up the illusion of growth by buying more junk. This means there are many people (and entire organisations) which contribute nothing but consume time.

I can't locate it, but I've noticed similar effects, and this pandemic seems to support it also (even after compensating for my likely confirmation bias).

The window of opportunity is very small and those high value employees who the big corporates can ensnare with high salaries are surely willing to value or prioritize other criteria for the time being. That window will surely close soon if the choked out economy is throttled back up again and the neo-slaves go back to their bread and circus to keep them distracted.

You do point out one main driver, manager anxiety about justifying their existence (I am not saying they should not exist, only that it is a high anxiety position), but there is also a bigger factor that is corporate finance and accounting driven. Massive investments in capital assets in the form of real estate and their overhead costs that are also collateral and backs all kinds of other derivative things like valuations. For example, institutional value investors look to book assets for investment cues. If the justification for office space breaks and is sold or even leases are cancelled, it will skew the numbers and institutional investors (private and public) that divine those numbers who rely on or are even legally compelled by past patterns, are not necessarily adapted to these new or future patterns and changing realities.

The system, any system is inherently driven to revert to the mean. This community, over most other communities, should realize that.

Like I said, I think that this period has starkly divided the good and bad managers, and really shown the value of someone who actually cares about what their team needs, what's stopping that, and how to support/cover them from wider company politics.

Unfortunately, I think in any oppressive company (which seems to be most of them once they get to medium-large) the selective pressure is against these managers staying, as they often don't get this reciprocity from their managers, or somewhere above that, and at some point it becomes too much, and you basically have to write off the whole team as the things that actually let them be productive are removed and they drift away.

> a bigger factor that is corporate finance and accounting driven

I mean, we are a national facility, so the space is to a certain point already "priced in" since the physical machine it's built around isn't going anywhere. But we were struggling to accommodate new people and even embarking of plans for an expensive new building on campus. WFH or hybrid working would completely solve that without big expensive investments.

All the people I know "IRL" working with small companies and startups dropped the rented office space as soon as they could last year (sensibly) and probably aren't going to go back at all.

It really will be interesting how this affects things long term, but I am afraid that you are probably right about things reverting towards the mean, and the momentum against change at large companies meaning that the average experience is only being slightly affected by this year's "experiment".

What I am really surprised at - companies have been blind to these bad managers and are letting them run the show. Just blindly fire them. Life becomes simpler for everyone, including the company.

Remote is a win-win for everyone except the bad managers. Why keep them then. Is this so hard to realise ?

I thought when people said they had an X hour commute they typically meant that they traveled for X hours to work and X hours from work

I wonder what percentage of people interpret it to mean one way vs. both ways.

I agree 100% that 2 hour commutes are crappy, but a 2-hour commute on a nice form of public transit is very different than 2 hours of being stuck in traffic and stressed out.

Another argument for saving a little each month.

For anyone average or lower earning, a 2 hour commute would cost you at least 10% of your income anyways (after tax).

I read my email/catch-up on slack/read the newspaper during my 45 minute commute in the morning. While wfh I spend the time doing something pretty similar.

Even if there was a great public transit option for my commute, I'd have to focus on aspects of work I could do because I get motion sickness pretty easily. Reading a laptop on a moving bus, train, or whatever is going to have me dizzy with a massive headache, then a lost hour recovering when I actually arrive. I do envy those who have the opportunity and capability to do this though.

The latter limitation will probably end soon with improved ML based background audio removal.

But, sure, let's go with that line - if you are salaried, and you have an hour each way commute, and your company okayed you working 6 hours a day (since your commute is 2), and they also paid you extra for mileage (to offset fuel and wear and tear), are you saying you'd object as strongly as the people objecting to those 2 hours ON TOP of 8 hours in the office, with no compensation for mileage?

Because that was my point; the general objection to commuting I've heard, and would raise myself, is that it is unpaid personal time. Not that it's just an unpleasant task that the company is compensating me fully for.

The ride is beautiful and the interior of the ferries are very nice; you can sit at a booth and drink coffee and eat breakfast. If you're lucky, you might see some orca whales while you're out on the water.

Yes, I could read and so forth and it was better than driving, but it still meant I had maybe 3 hours to myself in the evening.

It's OK as a very sometime thing but I'd certainly prefer not to do it even a couple days a week.

A pay cut going full remote would basically cancel out my commuting costs. I might end up with slightly more money in my pocket once taxes and snacks are accounted for.

That said, when things "get back to normal" I don't currently intend to apply for full remote. I didn't mind my commute two years ago. Maybe I will when I have to start doing it again.

Plus as you say the 15 hours a week I get back on average, is basically another part time job or contract work I could pick up if I really wanted to earn some more on top.

What happens when you factor in cost of living is that the 10% starts growing incredibly fast.

If their current spend is 80% of their salary, then the 10% is actually a 50% post-expense difference. Suddenly that drive makes sense.

This goes double, once you're a family. Negotiating between partners and children about which things to cut back on is unpleasant.

My advice (which I've followed imperfectly) is that if you have the income to make this reasonable, leave a cushion where you can handle setbacks without having to make the hard choices.

I hate it - and I love it - and I can’t stop. Part of me is concerned for my health, the other part of me is concerned the other-part is going to end the dream.

You have to set some boundaries. My big one is that I don’t work on weekends unless something is on fire. I may glance at emails but that’s it.

I also don’t live alone. I have a wife and kids and will take breaks to see them. I do work pretty long hours during the week but it’s punctuated with some positive human interaction. My wife stays home with the kids right now, so they are here.

I think if I lived alone I’d be prone to do what you do, and I’m not sure it would actually increase my productivity. There’s a point where you hit diminishing returns for any knowledge work. The brain needs rest like any other thing. I think if I lived alone I’d be forced to set weekday time boundaries to keep from going nuts.

If Google is progressive, they should buck the trend and do something like build sound-proof office-apartments that employees can hotel in for a few days at a time, and allow children. That would be worth a 10% "pay cut" to at least some of the people they want to remain on site.

We're in a new world. There's no reason to make employees suffer because someone did things a certain way a generation or two ago.

Alphabet will save a lot of money by not having so many warm bodies in the office. They eat less, they poop less, they generate less heat and make the AC work better, they require fewer support staff to be in the buildings, etc. Reducing pay because you're using fewer company paid resources is just as tone-deaf as that first try.

You mean back when they were illegally colluding with Apple and other technology companies to suppress wages.

> The next response came much later and it was a broad leveling of pay.

I got a 20% pay bump after the wage fixing scheme collapsed and those pay resets happened, and my employer was in no way involved in it-- Apple and Google's conspiracy just suppressed wages far beyond the active participants.

It's not about tone-deafness it's about maximizing profit. Parties that will willfully and knowingly break the law to conspire to fix wages aren't going to be bothered by moves which seem a little cruel or illogical.

I worked at Google for about 10 years. Never having to hunt for an open bathroom stall while under a certain degree of physiological distress has perhaps been the greatest benefit to WFH for me.

My point is, G can afford the losses on selling some buildings and have unused capacity without hurting their stock price.

That press release reads more like a "head of state" spending in key constituent areas for some policy changes needed. Shovels in dirt wins politicians, and Google needs all the help it can get with the looming antitrust issues.

[1] - https://blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/inve...

This is absolutely correct.

If Google would tell me that I'll see my pay cut by about 10% for working remotely, I'd put in 25% less effort – 15% for space, power, etc., and 10% to make up for the cut.

You are paid the least the company thinks it can pay to get an acceptable applicant to fill your position. The truth is that there are many capable people who would prefer to work remote, and they're willing to take a pay cut to make that happen. Therefore companies don't need to pay remote workers as much.

For some reason, I don't see anything economic (do you care where stuff is made? I don't, really, only that it gets made, the rest is irrelevant detail), nor obvious here.

There are perfectly capable engineers in this world making under 1000U$S a month, they are just not in the US.

Than again I presume almost everyone in this thread is speaking about American companies, not that it doesn't happen elsewhere, but generally these (as you put it, "sane") company stories tend to be in the US.

I've worked remotely for a long time, and have accepted the reality of increased electric bills, but I'm sure this was a surprise to some.

Do we still believe this is true? I mean, if that were true, then why Google (probably the IT company in need of the most talented engineers out there) is thinking about applying a measure that will scare away their most talented engineers? It doesn't hold.

If there were a "shortage of qualified engineers", Google would have already said "all of our engineers can work from home if they want to. The ones who want to work from our offices can do so as well". I mean, that's the best strategy to keep and attract the best of the best, isn't it?

No, hence the rest of the sentence:

> which is a political way of saying the software industry is underpaid already

To be clear, it's FAANG who are saying there is a shortage of qualified engineers in their campaign to procure more foreign labor, but really this means they don't want to have to pay domestic engineers what they're worth (they want more H1-B visas to increase the supply and thus decrease the unit cost of engineers--with the nice bonus that H1-B holders are more easily abused because the employer has the power to effectively have these holders deported).

> is thinking about applying a measure that will scare away their most talented engineers? It doesn't hold.

A couple of possibilities:

1. Google is fallible

2. Google may be exceptional in the software industry (e.g., they may be okay with some attrition because they're playing a longer game than others in the industry, or perhaps because they already pay top-tier salaries and don't believe attrition will affect them)

The industry has done everything in its power to try and retain people through disincentives (interview processes, on boarding process, expectations of often absurd spinup to productivity times, etc.) while not focusing on the incentives (increased pay, more time off, better work life balance, etc.). All of this, acting as sort of collusion agreement proxy to reduce poaching across the industry, makes it less attractive to jump ship and businesses know that.

Spending the time to update my resume, market it a bit, deal with a mixture of mostly sweatshops with some reasonable employers mixed in, and a few actual good employers hiring processes (recruiter spam, LC gauntlets, full day technical interviews) and often employers expecting you to clairvoyantly know their idiosyncrasies (internal infrastructure, business processes, pre-existing code bases and dozens of arbitrary dependencies they chose and worked with for years)--all of which businesses pretend aren't costs and externalize on employees, makes it less attractive.

Let's add in the mix of normal/traditional job switches: meeting and meshing with new coworkers, changing your commute which may not be insignificant, overhead of switching and moving your benefits packages around, delays for building/taking time off, new uncertainties/risks about stability, etc. and suddenly, that sign-on bonus with the near same package doesn't look so attractive.

Anymore, for me to even consider jumping ship I'd need a pretty hefty sign-on bonus just to deal with the rest that will turn into lost personal time and stress. I really need a significant TC bump and hopefully, better work/life balance and/or a combination of my current employer TC degrading due to increased demand, hours, stress, stagnant growth, etc. otherwise, industry has created so many disincentive barriers that I'll stay where I am.

Maybe it's not as tiresome/costly for some, but it certainly is for me.

> Competition for talent is pretty fierce, a good enough reason not to cut someone's salary is that it's likely they can go elsewhere and make what they're making now, plus a signing bonus

I really hope that scenario will happen. IT companies tend to repeat what Google, Amazon, and other tech giants do; so I expect most IT companies will follow Google regarding the topic we are discussing here. I hope am wrong.

> Sounds short sighted at best.

I would say so, but history says otherwise (e.g., Amazon)

Honestly, I think they’re sad seeing their big, expensive office spaces not being fully utilized, and want to be able around and physically see workers working.

Google was previously known in the wider world for imposing longer than average work days under the guise of "you love it here at the office we have pingpong and rock climbing".

It wasn't about extracting productivity, it was about imposing culture.

Honesty, in my experience this impression is just desperate cope from people with worse work environments. My time at Google was the easiest/most relaxing of my career by far. Hell, that's why I left.

But whenever people would ask me about all the flashy perks and I'd confirm we had them, 100% of the time they'd follow up by _telling_ me (not asking): "they work you like a dog though". It was an early and dramatic lesson in how powerfully people are chained to the just-world fallacy: their emotional incontinence was severe enough that it literally prevented them from conceiving of a work environment that was simply more pleasant than theirs.

Google's perk-filled environment doesn't need to be explained by anything but golden handcuffs + productivity boosts from having recreation/convenience onsite.

But I've been in and out of Google (Waterloo). They were there long, long hours often. Just the same, people seemed happy and fulfilled.

I don't think I would be—I covet my time. But I recognize that it wasn't designed around me, so whatever.

It's a fact of the process though: Google wanted people in the office longer, so they installed resources to keep people in the office longer. In that way, it's not overly surprising to me that they're trying to get people back into the office. Similarly with Apple: they didn't build that big fancy ring for nothing.

"Imposing" in your original comment is doing a lot of work here. Creating an environment that benefits your employees and allows them to be happier, more fulfilled, _and_ more productive doesn't quite fit the framing of being "imposed" upon.

You could just as well say that companies who allow remote work are "imposing" longer hours/more productivity on those for whom a flexible schedule is a better fit. But that renders the point meaningless.

Would you mind if I reach out to you? I'd be curious to learn more about your life/career path, if you're willing to share.

This is the only thing I question, given the mix of data suggesting the opposite is true. Stanford ran a project about it some time ago: https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs201/projects/crunc...

That may boil down to execution, though. That project emerged out of pretty scathing posts from the boiler room programming environments of EA. I'm pretty confident Google operates very differently, and probably learned from those calamities.

We know that over work reduces creativity and productivity. Hell, as an outsider you can practically see this in what Google offers; they’ve totally lost their way and keep rehashing the same products in repeatedly inferior ways.

Rather, I think that they feel that it’s more productive or that it gives them more control. Neither of which is a rational argument

(The claim is at odds with my observational data... assuming, of course, that we exclude interns and similar.)

I'd argue the company itself isn't very productive and is just treading water with its ridiculously profitable cash cow and moat.

That's a C-suite bug.

Most people I know at G are working on something related to the cash cow of "spying on people to sell them more stuff better". The number of folks working on actual hard problems seems to be very slim, though highly publicized.

I'm not saying this is definitely the case in google's situation, just... "effect on productivity" is hard to measure, and may have more than one measurement.

Just look around this thread to see how wild-eyed and frothing the conspiracy theories can get

So perhaps don’t jump to conclusions, especially when you’re doing it to impugn other people. It’s a bad look.

I 100% don't doubt that there are individual people here that have irrational feelings about Google for reasons other than the one I mentioned, or that have rational-but-uncharitable feelings about them. I'm not even particularly bothered by the target: Google in 2021 has a mountain of things to answer for that I think it deserves very harsh criticism for.

But the collective IQ of HN drops about 30 points whenever they come up, far beyond the level of the general anti-big-tech attitude you generally see here. The amount of circular reasoning and comments that don't stand up to a second's scrutiny is palpably higher than in the average HN thread, and over the last almost-decade of observing this fascinating dynamic, the one constant I've noticed has been a deep and abiding bitterness. Contrast this with, say, Facebook: while they get plenty of HN hate, it's of the same type that you find anywhere, and lacks a lot of the pitiful contortions you find HNers squeezing themselves into on the topic of Google.

I think you mean committed to life rather than work? Remember, people normally commute outside of work hours.

Therefore your math doesn't add up. 2hr commute against 8 hours of work is not a 25% increase.

But I think your point is still valid. Personally I'd "buy" my extra 2 hours of daily life for a 10% decrease in salary. Given that I'm awake for 17 hours, 2 hours saved is 11% of my waking time. Not a bad deal if you value your free time, or say you work on a side project.

Edit: see the correction below. It's still 25%, I was wrong.

What? Going from 8 to 10 hours is absolutely a 25% increase. 10 is 125% of 8

And secondly, an office job can be stressful, consuming, in a way that commuting isn't (if done by train or bicycle for instance). So i wouldn't put them all in the same box as time devoted to work.

But I was mainly arguing that the commute time shouldn't be counted against work time, it really isn't: you can listen to radio, or read if you are on public transport. Rather, I'd count the saved commute against my life (as in, not work) time.

An online survey found that 65% of American workers who said their jobs could be done entirely remotely were willing to take a pay cut of 5% — which could represent several years of annual raises — to stay at home. [1]

There's no question that there's a reasonable bargain to be struck, the question is the terms.

When the work is just as productive, both employer and employee can gain time. The employer can reduce their office space expense, which benefits should be shard by the employer, at least to the extent of helping outfit the home offices (e.g., they'd have to buy workstations & chairs anyway). OTOH, the employee gets huge benefits of time avoiding commuting, and reduced automobile expenses...

It'll be interesting to see how the new bargain shakes out.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-03/return-to...

He could easily handle the promotion aspect by framing it this way:

"As a promotion, I now don't have to drive 2 hours a day, and I still get the same pay!" That's a nice promotion, two prime hours of waking life 5 times a week. Not to mention the stress and gas/maintenance.

Any time you can exchange money for time, do it.

I've lived/worked in the Seattle area.

I've also, in a different location, had a similarly long commute.

In either case, I would have gladly taken a 10% hit to save all that time, stress, and car wear against myself.

I assume they're not taking RSUs away, so the cut is only to base salary (maybe bonus also?). Since RSUs tend to be over 50% of total comp, that's less than 5% cut in reality.

I can't relate to how one wouldn't take a 5% pay cut to eliminate a two hour commute! Heck I'd take a full 10% cut to avoid commuting two hours a day. At a typical goog salary one doesn't even notice 5% or 10%, but two hour commute sure changes life.

especially after you have structured your life around having that money and you already know you can handle the commute.

It's not a 25% increase in work time, it's a 50+% reduction in free time.