What people say they will do when there's no cost associated with an action and what people will actually do once a cost IS associated with the same action are frequently 2 different things.
Bob Lutz, in his self-aggrandizing book "Gutz", describes the initial phase of an automobile design project where a survey is conducted asking respondents whether they would prefer a vehicle with heated cupholders. It turned out the percentage of people who responded positively was significantly higher than the percentage of people who ultimately chose to pay for the option in actual sales.
I wonder if a similar effect will be seen regarding people returning to work.
There was a blog post posted here recently from someone who saw Google as a "family" and drank a lot of koolaid, as well as stories of high levels of entitlement. I wonder if there's a similar phenomenon going on where people assume that companies pampering them is a given and that they can get anything they want by complaining enough.
What they might find instead is the shock that "grass is greener on the other side" was a lie all along.
In this case, by "grass" I mean the combination of which subset of employers pay comparably to google, plus allow unrestricted WFH, plus have similar levels of infrastructure quality (such that your day to day doesn't involve dealing with broken infra or some such), number of meetings, levels of autonomy, etc.
I'm sure that there is a subset of jobs that ticks all those boxes, but what I don't believe is that they're in such abundance that one can simply quit google and stumble into one by simply waving around their xoogler status.
More likely than not, people following through w/ quitting will realize that work satisfaction does not solely depend on a single dimension (WFH-ness)
Negative cost but also negative revenue / productivity loss if not done properly.
Most data appears to show the hybrid model is the best for productivity. WFH several days a week, enabling focus and limiting distractions. Work from the office a couple days a week to enable coordination, connection, innovation, and alignment.
This forced experiment in 100% WFH was clearly bad for productivity. The reason tech companies provided so many perks in the past wasn't simply as a recruitment technique. A lot of it was to create an environment where workers worked longer hours and thus the firm got more productivity out of each worker. The cost-benefit analysis clearly supported that before. A caterer's salary is far lower than an engineer's.
> This forced experiment in 100% WFH was clearly bad for productivity.
Could you link to some data that demonstrates that?
> A lot of it was to create an environment where workers worked longer hours and thus the firm got more productivity out of each worker.
"longer hours" "more productivity" is obviously false for the extremes. It is unclear what is the threshold when a programmer starts to introduce more issues than they fix.
It is hard to measure productivity for a programmer (e.g., what might be productive short-term may be counter-productive long-term).
As an ISP engineer, I can tell you my company has numbers and figures that we are much more productive in networking, applications teams and development, and a handful of other teams across the board by working remotely. Been selling off officespace all last year and continuing to do so. We do work more working from home. And all that said, they know full well what teams should be back in the office and those of us who could feasibly work permanently from home.
How are these employees "pampered"? They found they enjoy working from home, so they prefer to keep doing that, and if Google doesn't oblige them, they'll start shopping among the many companies that currently do. The free market at work.
According to the blog post I mentioned, before WFH, Google apparently used to go out of its way to literally pamper engineers, with things like fancy cafeteria offerings, laundry services, massages, etc. I think it's important to keep in mind that when some people's complaints are on the level of "ugh, sushi again?", that their levels of entitlement may be a bit uncalibrated from the reality of how other companies treat employees.
The pseudo-moral judgement on Google's relations with its employees is out of place.
Google provides certain benefits to its employees, not out of the kindness of its heart or out of moral consideration, but because business analysis has determined it's in Google's own benefit to do so. To make itself more attractive, build up a prestigious brand as an employer, keep people working longer hours, etc.
The moment they determine it's no longer in their interest to provide you with these benefits - they'll fire you.
So let's stop pretending one party or the other here is acting on some moral basis. This is just business.
For the record, I didn't mean to imply any sort of moral judgment about Google itself, I was merely relating facts about Google perks and reports of how some employees reacted to them. The point, in fact, is mostly about the employees, who have often been characterized as out-of-touch with the workings of the world outside Google.
Also, if you are google employee who already moved away from the bay area, it may actually be easier to switch jobs (to a full remote option) than it is to move back to the bay area on September 1.
Many of the employees that are angry have already left, and have been working remote for 6+ months. The hard part of moving is already done. If anything, staying with google would be the more difficult choice since they need to move back!
If you know how to leverage your experience you can literally walk in as the CTO of most small startups if you are an ex-googler and don't act like a drone.
CTO of most small startups don't get paid as well as a typical moderately experienced Google engineer. And the job is a lot harder and higher stakes (which is something that some people prefer and others do not).
As someone who has worked at multiple FAANG companies, I think that is a total exaggeration. What on earth does being Engineer #56112 at Google have to do with someone's ability to be a CTO? We’re talking entirely different skill sets. What does "don't act like a drone" mean? Show me one start-up that will simply let me "walk in as the CTO". Come on!
I think that's true for sure. In fact, I know of more workplaces where when doing the hiring, previous experience with Google is a negative rather than positive, as previous ex-Google employees have introduced more problems than solutions, together with strongly holding a "better than you" attitude towards others.
There is the prestige & benefit of having worked for a FAANG, which, once attained, stays on one's resumé forever, so maybe for some people, tradeoffs that are worth it to attain such a job may no longer be worth it to remain in that job after a few years.
Yeah I think the play is to work for FANG for 1-2 years and then skedaddle really no reason to stay not like they're going to promote anyone to something meaningful unless you are truly a superstar.
Yes, employers have inertia on their side. But for precisely that reason, sometimes mild irritants end up having disproportionate effects in getting people to leave in a "The Elves Leave Middle Earth" moment.
Many, perhaps most, people have some degree of gripe-age with their jobs. Many also have enough experience to realize that the grass isn't always greener and the devil you know may be preferable.
No FANG company has good work culture or good work/life balance anymore, and all are entangled in some morally questionable project or another. Go work for a startup.
If you're a FANG-caliber candidate, the pool of startups you can work for have good work/life balance, high pay, and are pretty awesome. In general though you are of course right.
Very true. I worked for the DoD for a few years and it's definitely a good job to e.g. settle down and have a family and work for 50 years at with good job security, benefits, etc.
I moved too from DoD to FANG, and I’m not sure how you can say this with a straight face. Nothing FANG does on its worst day is comparable to what DoD does on its best day.
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.
Yeah that's very true for a large portion of the DoD. In my case I was doing theoretical research that was all getting published and pushing the AI field forward. People doing applied research get their stuff used for all sorts of unsavory stuff though.
Ah yes, remote within 100 miles of a Facebook hub. Which are... NYC and SF. Not exactly "remote" by my definition if you only have the option to live in the suburbs of a major metro area.
Quality of life improvement when you work remote is several fold higher. You have to experience it. I've been working remote (consulting) for about 4 years now. My wife has done it about 1/2 her career. We live in sunny SoCal (expensive, but very tolerable when you don't have to get on the freeways).
Take care of No. 1 first. That is you. GOOG folks, please don't cringe at FB. There is no difference.
Personal opinion: Google carefully treads the gray lines of legality and morals/ethics. Facebook leadership, on the other hand, decided a long time ago that they care about legality only. They seem very proud of that decision, too.
Google might still have a better reputation in certain circles but it is unclear what company is actually worse for the world at this time (btw, if you have a link where somebody tried to actually quantify it, it would be an interesting read).
Pretty much everyone has experienced what WFH is like a year plus into the pandemic. Those of us who want to go back to the office have experienced WFH, and our quality of life is lower with WFH. It's no longer true that people who say they don't like WFH would change their mind if only they'd experienced it.
Nobody has been experiencing normal remote work during the pandemic.
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.
> 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).
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!
And they are really tired by the "see, people do terribly at home, this proves it doesn't work" from the anti-WFH crowd, and being pushed out of something that works for them with such arguments. (Which is the reverse of your argument: please accept that for some people WFH works better and they really want to keep that option)
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.
100% agree. After 3 month of WFH, I started coming in to the empty building. I was the only one here, but it is so much easier to get work done when I'm not at home.
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).
I have a nice ~20min (4-5mi) bike ride to/from work in the SF East Bay, usually good weather. Found a route with bike lines and moderate traffic so its pretty nice. I'm looking forward to going back to the office more.
I tried that. I'm not motivated enough. Totally my problem but the structure of communting was really helpful in getting me to do it everyday.
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!
i've been doing remote consulting for over 10 years and i wouldn't go back to an office even if a company offered me doubled what i earn.
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).
Old Google gave us Google, Gmail - new Google has been continually making it worse and/or more evil. Maps and Android are probably a bit more of a mix though.
Regardless i'm not questing what Google _was_. I'm commenting on what Google _is_.
Let me know when google undermines American democracy, enables a genocide in Myanmar, or casually starts kicking human rights activists off its products.
Google has provided a platform that for years benefited off of extremists and only recently started taking action against it.
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.
If we’re making that comparison, absolutely. Both are in the ads business, but I get actual utility from one company’s products and the other company’s products make me feel worse at the end of the day.
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.
> If we’re making that comparison, absolutely. Both are in the ads business, but I get actual utility from one company’s products and the other company’s products make me feel worse at the end of the day.
I wish I could know which company is which by your comment, but I can't, any could be in any place here.
It's pretty clear that Google is the one with useful and revolutionary products (Android, Maps, Earth, YouTube, Gmail, Google Pay) while Facebook is basically only useful for groups nowadays or for Instagram (is that really useful?) and WhatsApp (which they bought and introduced stories on. Wohoo. Innovative.)
It's not that clear for me. Out of your examples, only Gmail and Google Pay are actually created by Google (or by people working at Google at the time of creation), the rest are acquisitions.
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.
My situtation is slightly different than the Google one, but I've already resolved if my employer makes me come back into the office with a full-time commute, I'm going to start looking for a different job right away.
I think a lot of employees are in this situation but aren't going to say this because they don't want to lose their job or have it held against them and be managed out of the company before they're told they need to come into the office.
Same, there are plenty of competitive offers, and if I cannot upgrade my lifestyle (no commute, house instead of studio, etc) with my current employer, so be it.
I've learned to be a fan of the expression, "Put your money where your mouth is" for exactly that reason (also, "follow the money" for similar reasons).
I'd wager there are two populations. There are people who prefer WFH but didn't move. And there are people who moved. I can't return to the office. It is too late. I moved to be closer to my family. The job doesn't outweigh that. If I can't work remotely, I'm leaving in September. My boss and my director both know this.
My car put the cupholders in front of the center console air vents, so they are heated in winter, and cooled in summer. But any spills end up on the radio/nav.
> the percentage of people who responded positively was significantly higher than the percentage of people who ultimately chose to pay for the option in actual sales
I'm guessing it's (at least partially) because they weren't offered a'la carte, but instead bundled with the "premium" interior package only offered in the most expensive trim.
This bundling is the only way I've ever gotten the option of heated/chilled cupholders (which are awesome, by the way).
Google workers probably do have other options. Maybe not as financially lucritive but they should be able to find work.
I have had people threaten to quit as we transition back to the office. These are tier 1 support people. I dont expect Ill have any no-call no-shows monday though.
We also have people that have straight up MOVED to other cities (or in one case, refused to move to our city despite it being a condition of employment).
"What people say they will do when there's no cost associated with an action and what people will actually do once a cost IS associated with the same action are frequently 2 different things."
This statement makes it sound like you think that Google employees are unable to attach a cost to leaving the company until they actually commit the act. Am I misunderstanding? Because that's obviously not true.
They won't immediately abandon ship once we force them back to the salt mines, so there's no problem.
Even if they come back if the resent the company for economically forcing them back that isn't a good situation for morale or productivity or retention.
It seems strange that Google management would push so hard on this. Nearly everyone I've spoken to has reported that WFH productivity has been equal, if not better than pre-pandemic.
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.
“Productivity” is not something a person can measure themselves. Sure, some people may be closing bugs faster than when in the office. But productivity manifests itself in different ways over longer time periods. Is there a strong corporate culture? Are junior staff being mentored and trained? Are new product ideas like Chromecast being thought of and shipped?
The individual employee is not going to be a reliable indicator for any of these questions.
You say that like senior management typically makes decisions based on data and facts, rather than the reality where they just shoot from the hip using their "gut."
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 love how engineers pretend that they are the only ones acting rationally. It's as if they are playing chess and can never think there might be a reason behind the other players move, only their plan makes sense.
I've seen an awful lot of either not understanding what a measurement means, or not caring, among management, including out of "top-tier" folks from e.g. management consulting firms you've heard of. Talking really obvious "experimental error" types of things. Taking a measurement as indicating something when there there are obvious confounders which, if you don't look into them, are probably making your number meaningless.
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.
It is not at all required for engineers to be acting rationally, let alone for them to be the only ones acting rationally, for workers—of any type—to have a better understanding of what will let them get a good job done for the company than upper management.
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.
This rational behavior in the face of stupid incentives is the same reason the rational set of management-sorts may not bother to make sure their facts & figures actually demonstrate what they claim they do, even when they know they probably don't. The extra effort wouldn't help them get the answer they're looking for, anyway, and might even harm their chances if they're honest about the level of uncertainty.
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.
The reason they start and kill so many projects is precisely because they are measuring top-level metrics and acting on them. A developer is going to look at how much functionality they implement, refactoring they complete or tickets they close and say "Wow, I've been so productive working from home". Management is going to look at growth and revenue, execution against top-level OKRs and the opportunity costs of competing options and maybe reach a different conclusion.
The reality is that neither is probably a WFH issue as a first-order effect.
Can't trust the senior managers of one of the largest revenue generating companies on the plant? With probably the highest Revenue per employee ever in the history of modern business (if not highest, up there).
I dunno, seems like they are doing ok at their jobs....
98%+ of Google’s senior managers today weren’t around when the company originally pioneered and grew the business lines that pay those manager’s salaries.
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.
Statistically speaking, I wouldn't trust the senior managers of any company to genuinely know what measures will improve their business over the long term. Even leaving aside the depressingly large percentage who are fundamentally incompetent at managing (eg, the ones who think "yell louder and louder until people do what you demand" is an effective management style), a huge number of management at all levels are indoctrinated to believe that the next quarter's numbers, and hence the stock price, are the #1 priority at all times.
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.
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.
> “Productivity” is not something a person can measure themselves.
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!
Not everything can be numerically measured. By what metric is Macbeth better than the Da Vinci Code?
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.
I agree that Google management made this decision mostly on gut feel. But I think that it aligns with my own gut feel, which is that it’s going to be very hard for a fully remote team to invent the next Waymo car or iPad or whatever, and I also think that it will be very hard for a junior engineer to get the same learning remotely as they do colocated with 20 year tenured engineers. If I was CEO of Google I would have made the same decision.
> I agree that Google management made this decision mostly on gut feel. But I think that it aligns with my own gut feel
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. ;)
The difference is that the individual employee advocating for WFH is doing so because it’s better for them, not because it’s better for Google. The interests of capital and labor are not necessarily aligned here.
Frankly, that makes me even more suspicious of any claims by either side that are not backed by data. Confirmation bias isn't a good basis for credulity.
> By what metric is Macbeth better than the Da Vinci Code?
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.
Yes but “best pacing” again requires a judgment call, it’s not a numerical metric, and some things don’t add in a logical way (“The Big Lebowski” has almost no plot whatsoever but is an excellent film).
Well, if I was going to pick one organization in my experience that I think is best able to judge developer productivity it would be google. They have a team of organizational analysts who study it and have developed a pretty sophisticated model. Interestingly, in past research they found that remote work is the top predictor of developer productivity.
I don't want to misrepresent it, but my understanding is that an expressed preference for working remotely is consistently associated with high self-evaluation of productivity. The abstract says "our results also suggest that software developers’ self-rated productivity is more strongly related to task variety and ability to work remotely."
Fair point. If the decision was actually about broad productivity, and management was able to make a clear-eyed judgment about that, you'd hope they would reveal the data they used, so people didn't just assume it was a petty control issue. I think a lot of people would assume that's what it was actually about.
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.
My company made a survey earlier this year about WFH. There was overwhelming support for it. Around 90 % want to work at least one day per week from home. A quarter want to work completely from home. Employer satisfaction went up a lot in 2020. Productivity, revenue, earnings and new hires reached unprecedented levels for the company.
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.
Direction out of touch with the importance of cultural well-being. At this point I'm not accepting talks with companies that do that and point them to their online onboarding and processes. If they are so lonely that they value what they see more than the work done then I have other companies and other priorities.
Apart from the "WFH is not good for everyone" (which I agree with, and there are many situations where people actively do not want to WFH), there is also the internal company cult, which makes top management believe that people stay at a job for the vibes and relationships.
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.
> Nearly everyone I've spoken to has reported that WFH productivity has been equal, if not better than pre-pandemic.
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.
How many of them have slowed down b/c of the pandemic vs WFH? I can imagine a job being a lot harder if suddenly your children are home all day, heck my kids aren't even school age and my wife is home fulltime and I still sometimes have my little ones come in asking for juice or to help them put on their shirt, or something like that.
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.
this matches my experience as a dev manager. We had a bump in productivity initially, probably due to a fully-charged battery of team combined with less disruptions, but now productivity has declined by all our quantative measures (deploys, cycle times, failure frequency,etc). These are all proxies and not prefectly isolated, but better than "gut feel"
Exactly. I've lived both experiences: it was perfect for me when my son, few months old, was sleeping the most part of the day. But once a kid switches to 1 nap per day, it's impossible to have a schedule to have any kind of focused work. Day care here have long waiting lists and they've been closed for half of the pandemic anyway.
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.
> one of the people present said that they missed being able to just pop up, look over direct reports' shoulders, etc.
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!"
Google isn’t Yahoo for sure and I presume they have better ways to know if people are putting in work —but... Marissa Maier had the unfortunate discovery that many of her remote workers were ghost workers. On the payroll but not doing much. Some might have even had other full-time jobs.
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.
> Marissa Maier had the unfortunate discovery that many of her remote workers were ghost workers.
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?
I worked with a guy on a project who was simultaneously running two developers teams in India on the side. He knew the local stack inside and out so he was incredibly useful, but he could generate his insights and do his job in 30-60 minutes each day.
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.
How many CEOs and "founders" on LinkedIn list a half-dozen active projects, businesses, and roles (boards, "advisor"), and then blog about the "challenge" of balancing all that with family life, which they still manage to do just fine (the actual secret that cuts to the heart of how they manage that, but which won't make their blog post? None of their jobs demand much time, and they have secretaries and assistants)
Getting bent out of shape when workers do it is just classist bullshit.
I sometimes wonder if the widespread elimination of admins, even shared ones, for everyone below a fairly high level is a net positive.
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.
I've had the thought before that a "team secretary" for programmers would be a huge productivity and QOL boost. I don't think every single developer needs one, but one shared among 4-10 programmers? Might make a ton of sense.
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.
I think it really is better to have everyone on a team doing the same thing. Fully remote teams work fine and fully in person teams work fine. The worst case scenario is an in person team with one remote person. When you get closer to 50/50, that is better but still not great. I think it is understandable that companies want to extend this recognition all the way to the company level. I don't like it, I think it's better (but harder, logistically) to handle it at a lower level, like within teams or product areas, but I can understand their thinking. I expect there to be a lot of self-sorting after the pandemic, between teams / divisions / companies that are remote and those that are in person.
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.
Think about the type of workplace that Google offers, and why they offer that. Professional kitchens, on-site laundry, the bikes, getting speakers to come in and give talks, all that stuff.
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.
Something I've been thinking about is that your typical rank and file employees work is pretty transparent. I created 6 widgets, I served 4 customers, I wrote 100 lines of code. Middle management that isn't really true, they can mill around and informally talk with people as part of their work. If everyone is remote, middle management's efforts become much more measurable.
This is a good point. What I've noticed for our org is that it's much more apparent which managers are quality and are able to help out their team and more, and which where obviously just filling up their work days with meetings, and meetings about meetings.
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.
I know someone fairly well known in Web circles who got hired by Google. They were remote but there was clearly not a meeting of the minds. They apparently heard maybe move to SF someday but could stay remote as long as they wanted to. And Google apparently heard remote for (only) the immediate future. At some point I gather it became a matter of "This actually isn't optional" and they ended up leaving.
This doesn’t surprise me. They got bait and switched by their recruiter like I did. I learned later on that recruiters (mostly contracted out) are heavily incentivized to get as many people hired as possible, so them saying things that bend the truth makes sense
> Nearly everyone I've spoken to has reported that WFH productivity has been equal, if not better than pre-pandemic.
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 have young kids and WFH. They go to childcare/preschool during the day. For me, a flexible WFH schedule has been extremely helpful while starting a family. That said, I understand not everyone’s WFH environment is the same.
I take the grandparent comment meant kids at home. In some areas day care have been closed.
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.
Yes, productivity increased in the short term. However, this was due to heroic efforts on the part of the teams. I know I worked crazy-ass hours last year. This was needed to cover for the rest of the team who were on 50% hours (or less if partner wasn't WFH) due to childcare requirements.
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.
Why would anyone say that WFH has a bad/lower productivity? Engineers and managers are motivated to report high productivity (as long as it's inevitable) and since it's hard to measure it's easy to fake.
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
You would think the rational thing to do would be to maximize productivity and minimize cost: You can get the same or greater productivity from WFH that you can from open-plan offices, with WFH being a huge cost saver to the business.
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.
Having read Work Rules! by Laszlo Bock, It does not seem that strange to me...
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.
I think there is something to that - a lot of stuff used to come up from random encounter with other peopl in the company and yet that almost totally absent now. A lot of stuff seems like it is still coasting based on that momentum (eq. people you met at a conference or at lunch) yet new connections are not being made.
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.
Random encounters that lead to interesting things can happen when working from home. For example, I work on Jupyter and last week there was a "Jupyter realtime collaboration workshop" and at one point participants were randomly divided up into breakout groups. I ended up sharing and learning all kinds of interesting new things with a small group of random people I've never met before, and making important connections. It felt very much like the sort of random things that could happen in person, with the main difference being that it was even more efficient than it would be in an office or conference center.
Yeah, but that's the thing - you need to consciously organize such events. I'm sure remote only companies have always done such informal "mixer" events but companies that were not heavily into WFH might no be aware it's needed untill all the social inteaction based stuff thats currently coasting with inertia comes to a halt.
I personally believe that the "serendipitous random hallway conversations" thing is totally overrated. I don't deny that it probably once in a while leads to a great product, but how often? Quantify it! Moreover, if your business depends on this element of randomness to provide value, I'd argue the opposite: you have a process problem that needs to be addressed. Brainstorming and ideation should not be dependent on the roll of dice.
I'm an engineering manager and everyone on my teams has a different specific vision of "perfect" but all want "more flexibility". I think we can do this but it's both (1) new and (2) more complicated. The bigger you are the more efficiency benefit to adopting a one size fits all approach, even if it fails some.
Execs and managers have inherently social jobs, so not having everyone in the office is a concentrated pain point for them compared to it being a minor inconvenience for most individual contributors. Conveniently for the execs, they also have concentrated power to decide this for themselves and ICs, whereas ICs have little collective power.
The "return to normal" moment:
Companies that don't return to office as soon as the pandemic recedes will have a much harder time justifying the move later (see Yahoo!). So if there's a time to dig in and fight, it's right now as the extraordinary situation of the pandemic ends, since whatever policy is in place then will likely stay in place for years after.
> Nearly everyone I've spoken to has reported that WFH productivity has been equal, if not better than pre-pandemic.
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.
> Nearly everyone I've spoken to has reported that WFH productivity has been equal, if not better than pre-pandemic.
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.)
Google did a study that showed in-person collaboration fosters innovation, which is key to success for software companies. This study is why Marissa Mayer banned remote work when she became CEO of Yahoo.
Friends and family keep asking me if I'm moving out of my metro area or if I'll move to the deep xurbs. But I've held off any such machinations exactly because of this. My employer has embraced WFH beyond the pandemic but all it takes is a couple bad quarters and a new CEO deciding that working from home is "part of the problem" and "work from the office" is part of some shiny new turnaround plan.
And you never know when you might need a job and the best you can come up with is one with a company with this kind of control freak attendance culture.
We've seen an exodus from London, people buying houses in remoter parts of the country on the basis that they will be able to continue to WFH after the pandemic is over. Personally I think that is quite a rash decision to make right now.
It depends on the company and the individual situation of course. But everything I see suggests that coming in on a fairly regular basis (like 1-2 days per week) is going to be more common than being fully remote, which will generally be on a case by case basis.
Of course if coming into a office is a few days every few weeks sort of thing, people can travel greater distances to do that.
Maybe they like to WFH and they are good at what they do.
If they can buy a house and pay half in repayments than what they were paying in rent, then is that rash decision?
I'd rather earn less and have a house and no commute.
Maybe its a case of people realising that there are other ways of living.
The rash decision is in the risk of their employer deciding to forbid WFH post-covid and they now have the decision of a a long commute or looking for a new job.
If my employer were to offer permanent remote (in writing), I'd list my house and move out of the Bay Area that minute. It's literally the only thing keeping me in this expensive pit.
You've got to get it in writing though, as you say the policy could be changed on a whim and then you're stuck! Also, I wouldn't trust a recruiter who promised WFH unless they promised it in writing. Recruiters can say whatever nonsense they want in order to convince you to join, and then once you do, it's "oopsie! I was totally wrong about that whole WFH thing. Please report to your office building on Monday!"
An offer "in writing" means effectively nothing in the US. I'm not sure where people get this idea. Your employment is, for all intents and purposes, "at-will" even if it's not technically codified in law due to the high burden of proof on the employee. If your employer wants to change the contract, you've got an uphill battle to keeping the original terms AND your job.
It would be interesting to know the median commute time for those who say they will quit or not. For me it is just insane even thinking about going to go back to 2h commute each day. I don't even know why I considered that OK.
I only have a 15 min drive to work, and while working from home makes a few things easier, like picking up my daughter from daycare, the benefits of the office easily compete with the 30 - 35 minute commute.
I get better working conditions, better coffee, better lunch and I feel like I’m not alone during difficult tasks.
Ideally I’d like to work from home one or two days week, and be at the office the remaining days.
I also have about 40 minutes of commute per day. However I get better working conditions, lunch, etc, when I work from home. Not to mention that it's much less stressful, and I can go lay down in my bed for a couple of minutes if I want to. I also do some chores during breaks, which saves me even more time at the end of the day.
Based on the comments about working from I read, either here on HN or on LinkedIn, it seems to me that people reluctance to return to the office is often based on two thing, well three in the case of the insane commutes some people have. But in general it's either because they work under poor conditions in their offices, or because they have a personality that's ill suited to modern open plan offices.
There's nothing wrong in not wanting to return to an environment that's not right for your personality, or simply a poor environment for any office worker. Sadly I think that those companies who would care to address such issue are the same companies who already have employees wanting to return to their offices.
Perhaps one thing we have learnt is that if you're a company who care very little about the work environment you provide, and don't feel like provide better facilities, then you can do away with the office and keep your employees happy that way.
I really want to know this too. The traffic in the bay area is so awful and housing is so expensive that I imagine a lot of people are just brutalized by the commute, at least in the mountain view office (dunno what its like elsewhere). Even if you have access to the shuttle its still wasted time that a person will never get back and I think covid made that obvious to many people who might've just accepted the commute blindly (I did pre covid).
My Bay Area commute is 4+ hours daily, depending on traffic. I don't make nearly enough to be able to afford a $2M "starter home" on the Peninsula, and do not want to be packed into a tiny apartment in the faceless UglyCube#51 apartment complex. COVID-19 and remote work has been a huge quality of life improvement for me.
I've always been mystified by the state of remote work at Google, because I understood that they pushed pretty hard on being in the office.
And yet I've had many video conference calls with various teams at Google over the last 8 years and in every single one, most of the Googlers on the call were obviously dialing in from home. I even flew to Mountain View once for a big all-day meeting. I got there, met my coworkers in the lobby, and was escorted to a conference room by a manager who dialed us in for the video conference with all the engineers at home. I can't think of a time I've interacted with a group of Googlers in their office.
Was this really not the norm? Is it the norm for engineers but not for everyone else or something?
While I was there, they had a big "mobile first" push, and they were encouraging employees to try working exclusively from phones and tablets one day a week. Of course as an embedded software engineer working within their IT policies, I had my gubuntu workstation, macbook, and a gubuntu laptop, and I also had a windows laptop to pull out once a month or so when I needed to run obscure windows only tools.
For a while I had to travel every couple months along with plenty of other coworkers. I worked a few days here and there from other offices and I don't recall there being any particular resistance to it. It was fun visiting other offices. I tried bacon syrup in my coffee in Ann Arbor, climbed around on a giant rope net in Pittsburgh, video conferenced with someone from inside a giant binocular in Santa Monica, and even had Google office lunch in Dubai.
We had a 6-12 month period of ambiguity / lack of project direction, and coupled with Google's (toxic in my opinion) perf/promo system it created morale issues. I personally was finding it difficult to make it to the office before 11AM most days, which my manager called me out on, but within the context of trying to understand why there were morale issues. My team was able to figure out the underlying issues and it got better, but that's right around when I decided to give Zipline a try, and it's been 5 years of really satisfying work with a great group of people.
That's surprising. I always thought Android was terrible for development because of a lack of dogfooding but it sounds like they actually try to use it.
At the time at least, the extent of working on mobile devices seemed to be catching up on emails and messages, and calling into meetings.
Google doesn't allow source code to be stored locally on mobile devices including laptops for security reasons. IT managed laptops can at least connect to some internal systems, and while I was there they rolled out tools to make it productive to code from laptops. As far as I know though, no one codes on an Android device. Maybe that's changed since I left.
Google does in general do a pretty good job dogfooding, I think. All the things about Google services that drive folk crazy tend to drive Googlers more crazy by 10x. I still have a special hate for Drive's search functionality, for example...
Permanent or official WFH arrangements are generally not a thing, but just taking days here and there informally as WFH days is something that many teams are pretty permissive about from what I understand.
Yeah and that's the kind of thing I would hope really does become more normal virtually everywhere. Especially when a job is so easily done remotely most of the time, it should be very low cost for people to be a more available parent when kids are sick, or stay home when they might be contagious, or just get errands done in a timely manner.
But this has happened to me so much, it didn't seem like it could be a coincidence that I happened to catch everyone on their WFH day that week...
I travel a lot because I’m in sales, so I’m constantly in and out of the office. I very much want to return to the office, because for me it’s a homebase, where I can connect with my colleagues. It just hasn’t been the same and I feel that my workflow has diminished without the communal nature of the office.
I don’t travel at all, just a developer in front of a screen 8 hours a day. I very much prefer to stay home and get to work by getting to my desk instead of fighting traffic.
To each their own, but remote work is now a perk that some companies will offer and others won’t, not offering it will effectively cut out a fairly large percent of devs that don’t want to go back.
Similar boat here. When we were still in the office, I would go to a handful of meetings, and then the rest of my actual working time was spent alone in a solo or shared office space. Going forward, a hybrid approach where I could go in a day or two for bigger group meetings and then do my actual work at home would be preferred.
The question is what will be included in the fairly large percent. If you lose this way some good, but you filter all the potential slackers it may leave you with a better pool.
I'm a developer and spending 1-2 hours a day to commute to an office where I have to microwave a lunch, sit in a cubicle all day, and be forced to overhear coworkers talk about inane things while I'm trying to concentrate sounds like hell to me. Working from home has increased my productivity and made work more enjoyable.
Corporate offices were always terrible but when they removed the cubicles for the "open-office plan" was the last straw. Having my own room for work, at home, is the only way to go.
I would rather my kids interrupt me at my home office than having to hear coworkers chatting and eating all day.
And that is totally fine. You and anyone who wants to go back to the office should be absolutely allowed to do so! The issue is more with the modest number of folks who prefer to work remotely and prefer not live near a Google campus.
If you are a high performer who has manager/VP level approval to stay remote, why would Google HR force you to move back to a Google office? They should just allow some folks to work full remote if they have support and approval from their managers, but instead Google corporate is saying everyone needs to be close to their office on Sept 1.
To play devil's advocate, managing/being in a team where most people are in the office and a few remote is difficult. There will be a natural tendency to push aside/forget the people remote.
I will be in this position (the only one remote) in a few months when they all go back in the office. I've talked with my manager about it, and we're trying to prepare this, but I'm not sure it is going to work.
Also, the commute argument will get worse then. They kinda expect me to come to the office every couple of weeks, and I do not look forward to the 7 hours round trip.
In that case, then your manager could not support you going remote and require you to come back. If that were the case, I would understand (though it would be a bummer for you).
I am saying there are employees at google who a performing well remotely now, their manager/VP support them staying remote, but Google HR is saying they must return to the office anyways. Google should just allows managers/VPs to let employees stay remote if they are good employees and are performing well. Instead they are pushing a one size fits all policy and haven't said anything about possible manager/VP exceptions.
This is how I feel! Some need the office, some don’t. Let them all make the decision for what works best, it will make everyone happier and hopefully additional positive benefits.
They weren't saying that. They were just saying that they preferred having an office. I think it's okay to want to have an office. Working from home isn't for everyone.
I pay for my own office because I really need my work space to be separate from my home space, but I understand why others would prefer to not have a commute/be closer to the family/enjoy their creature comforts/etc.
I like offices too, but they are bad in many ways that ought to be acknowledged. To ask those who spend all day writing code to bookend that with an hour long commute each day, because other people enjoy “having a chat” is absurd.
In my brief experience there, Google was staunchly against remote work, even remote work between office locations. A big reason behind me leaving (aside from not enjoying the work) was that I wanted to work from an office in another state but was told that wouldn't be possible despite the recruiter I was working with saying otherwise. The work could have 100% been done from another office (or from anywhere, really), but, nope, not possible.
I’ve told myself I won’t go back to the Bay Area. SF is a joke and the peninsula is ridiculously overpriced even on a tech salary. I’ve loved the last year living outside of the Bay Area.
On the other hand, the thought of whiteboard interviews at this stage in my life or taking a massive pay cut to work at a local company is not enticing either. So we’ll see what happens in a couple months when forced to decide. I realize the path of least resistance might win out for me and others.
I agree. When I left the Bay Area at the start of the pandemic, I felt a surprising surge of freedom.
The salaries and jobs in the Bay Area are great, but they come with the big caveat of choosing between (1) living near work, but spending a fortune to rent small, old apartments forever or (2) having a better living space, but with a nightmare commute.
Not really. As somebody who has seen both sides of a hiring process like that, the reality is the vast majority of candidates are just awful. You can probably rule out nearly 75% of applicants right off the bat. Add in hiring laws, bureaucracy, immigration, negotiation, candidates withdrawing, and finding a good person who works for your team can take months.
I was under the impression that it was sort of like Harvard: lots of applications, but a good chunk of those denied could have just have easily been accepted if there was space
You seem to have experience with their hiring and I have none (only applying) so I have much more faith in what you're saying than my preconceived ideas.
As in, a significant chunk of candidates cannot write code, have outright lies on their CV, have never used anything other than visual basic, etc...
In addition, basic statistics suggests you need all new hires to be better than 50% of the existing company, or your average skill level will go down, which makes hiring just hard mathematically.
> Can't you rule a lot of those candidate (other than CV liars) out algorithmically?
I think all companies do this, but it's really easy to game the metrics. People do it unconsciously, even.
> This seems especially difficult when hiring graduates/junior roles due to the lack of unknowns.
Yep, so it takes hours of interviewing per candidate, across dozens of candidates just to hire to minimise the risk for one role. At a global level, FAANGs are hiring loads, but at a team/local level there's never enough people due to specific team needs or turnover.
Cannot write code is very different from cannot write code on a whiteboard to solve a difficult problem in a limited amount of time in a stressful setting where you constantly have to keep talking and explaining what you are doing and cannot pause to think.
Yes, could you elaborate on the awful nature of most applicants? Do you mean that they are not fit to make software or that they are not Google material?
The former. Everybody knows top quality engineers are very hard to find, but there is also an inverse problem - the amount of programmers who know nothing but React.js or other <buzzword> is shockingly high.
Nah, people say they will quit , but they wont, there are people who do want to go back to the office, and will die to work at Google, also very competent (not as much as people here that love working from home, I'm sure). Also most tech companies will go back, MSFT, Amazon, ... You can go to FB tho, but then you will be working for FB, if you care only about the money, then is fine I guess, at least personally is not a place I would love to be in.
OK, I literally Googled "cost for an average US business is to simply replace an employee":
Thirty case studies taken from the 11 most-relevant research papers on the costs of employee turnover demonstrate that it costs businesses about one-fifth of a worker’s salary to replace that worker.
This take entirely ignores the invested human capital, which you lose entirely when you drive a worker to quit. Google have invested a lot into retaining their workers as well, so I'm sure that they know that as well.
Is Google even good at retaining employees? The average tenure appears to be 1 to 2 years. [1] [2] [3]
Hardly enough time to even know the impact and costs of what you developed and shipped. Kind of makes you wonder what type of work force you're creating when a large percentage of them are constantly leaving. Maybe for ICs this isn't a concern compared to Directors, VPs, or maybe Staff SEs?
I mean it intuitively kind of makes sense. If you work in a city with many other high paying prestigious jobs, why wouldn't you job hop? There's little risk, whereas if you were in a city that had very few prospects you'd probably stick around longer.
I live in Boston and I jump around every year'ish getting more salary at each place I've worked at. If you worked at Google (or any other prestigious company), I imagine it's far far easier interviewing else where. Especially if you jump from prestigious company to prestigious company.
It's never hurt me, at least IME. I still get recruiters from Amazon, Facebook, Apple, WayFair, and HubSpot hounding once every few months. I think my only skills that stand out are a11y and data viz. A11y seems to be in a real demand as of the last two years, maybe that keeps me in the running? IDK.
I figured people will always need devs and people really blow the "job hopper" thing out of proportion. Every job hopper I know makes a lot of money and they never struggled to find jobs. If anything they seem to have the best jobs from what I see.
One of the most low-value words in a headline or statement is "some".
If you take any scenario and ask a large enough group of people their opinions, there's going to inevitably be an arbitrary number (that can then be qualified as some) that will have the reactionary view that makes for an eye catching headline.
Put simply, "some" is just vague enough to allow these article writers to get a clickbait headline from a statement that only a handful of people have made. It's lazy and disingenuous, which are two words I've found myself using to describe the journalism industry as a whole lately.
Bob Lutz, in his self-aggrandizing book "Gutz", describes the initial phase of an automobile design project where a survey is conducted asking respondents whether they would prefer a vehicle with heated cupholders. It turned out the percentage of people who responded positively was significantly higher than the percentage of people who ultimately chose to pay for the option in actual sales.
I wonder if a similar effect will be seen regarding people returning to work.