Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4

Re:Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other off... by dekhn on Wednesday March 02, 2022 @06:34PM (#30535002)

There is already a huge google engineer hemorrhage. A number of principal engineers and other folks I thought would be google lifers moved to snowflake. I don't expect this to affect Google's ability to continue to grow at 15-20%, though. There will be armies of younger people who still want to jumpstart their career there.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other off... by ceras on Wednesday March 02, 2022 @07:58PM (#30535712)

Google has always lost top people to the next hip large-but-not-too-large tech company as they try something fresh / try to win the tech stock lottery. It was Facebook over 10 years ago, for example. You could get counter-offers to not leave for FB in that era. Is the current attrition any different?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other off... by obviouslynotme on Wednesday March 02, 2022 @06:43PM (#30535105)

Google needs long tenure more than other companies due to its large reliance on in-house software. This is yet another move to shoot themselves in the foot. Luckily, network effects will keep them in business for another few decades.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other off... by scarface74 on Wednesday March 02, 2022 @10:36PM (#30536850)

Every large tech company relies on “in house software”.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other off... by bitcharmer on Thursday March 03, 2022 @01:31AM (#30537849)

Yes, but I can assure you there are vast differences.

Worked for many tier 1 investment banks in the techiest corners of each org and some cases felt like startups with all the shiny new toys everyone else was using vs the dark ages of customized software straight from the nineties or some other entirely-in-house-built abomination in other places.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other off... by morgante on Thursday March 03, 2022 @01:31AM (#30537848)

Totally anecdotally, lagging comp and bureaucracy are much bigger sources of attrition than remote work. For the most part, anyone who wants to go remote can.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other off... by eikenberry on Wednesday March 02, 2022 @06:49PM (#30535169)

Replacing senior engineers with juniors isn't sustainable though and their software quality is going to get a lot worse. Probably sooner than they think.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other off... by munificent on Wednesday March 02, 2022 @07:08PM (#30535315)

I mean... sustainably replacing senior people with junior people is the predominant arc of life throughout all human history. People retire or die.

You need to make sure you aren't replacing them so fast that the median experience level is dropping, but it's certainly the case that the average experience level of the incoming cohort is expected to be lower than the outgoing one.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other off... by ehnto on Wednesday March 02, 2022 @08:18PM (#30535883)

It's not just about experience as an individual though, Google has hordes of arcane institutional knowledge about it's own platforms to maintain, like any large organization. Even if they were replacing everyone with senior devs and not juniors, you'd still be losing little bits of that each time someone left.

You see it at institutions, hundreds of individual "low bus factor" risks spread throughout the organization. The company would survive, but it would be a tough time, and a terrible place to work, during a large knowledge exodus.

[ Parent | on HN ]