[yamellasmallela]

This is really stupid. Most people do not need to be in an office to get work done. Google, and all these other tech companies, made record profits this year.

I just don't get why they insist on keeping people in a seat? At least for google, offering all these on-site only perks is just a scheme to keep employees at work for as long as possible.

[eweise]

Aside from jobs that actually need to be done in person, I think it really comes down to leadership egos. Probably just feels good to walk by a sea of minions on your way to the corner office.

[xyzelement]

Yup that's exactly right. Google classifies office leases as "Ego stroking and miscellaneous". It's right there in the SEC filings.

[mikeodds]

Can you link this? I tried finding it

[mycologos]

(The parent comment is a joke.)

[mikeodds]

WeWork’s S1 has distorted my ability to detect satire apparently.

[dboreham]

Everyone interprets fancy office buildings in all industries in this context.

[UncleMeat]

In my experience at google, vps don’t have corner offices.

[jayd16]

If you're right, then wfh companies will out compete the rest and there's nothing to worry about. My guess is there are a lot of benefits to face to face communication and the separation of work and home but we'll just have to see.

[remir]

Well 60% of their workers chose to come back to the office. I guess not everybody likes working from home full time. Google can't really ignore that.

[cmrdporcupine]

Anecdotally, as a Googler, I think I've talked to maybe one person on the teams I've been on in the past year who really wants to stay remote. Nobody else really likes it, and misses the office and being around people.

The new team I'm on is better, as we have a daily standup and more frequent interaction. But I still miss the face to face interaction, spontaneous brainstorming, and ability to just tap someone on a shoulder to ask for help, etc.

Remote works for some people, but it isn't working for me right now.

[riffraff]

I agree 100% with the idea that not everyone enjoys remote work, and I think actually the majority of people won't.

But I'd like to point out that working from home this last year (with forced kids at home, no chance to travel, services closed etc) was not the common experience people had in non-pandemic times.

[srinivgp]

How many of those are quite aware that if they don't choose, they're on the chopping block? So far I've known exactly two people who actually want to return to the office more than just like once in a while for fun, regardless of what they tell their boss. And one shouldn't count much because she also is going to retire shortly. I'm pretty sure I'm an outlier but not a "no really it's 60%" outlier.

[tdeck]

I would like to continue working from home, as I've found it allows me to better align my time with my priorities and to be more productive. Since I'm in a great relationship and keep up with friends, I don't feel isolated. I don't miss the 2 hours of commuting on the N each day. I didn't expect any of this to be the case - I thought WFH would make me depressed and lonely.

That said, I know many people who really miss being in the office, including many former colleagues at Google. Some of them have kids, while others need the social aspect of in office culture. I really believe that at least half the company wants to work from an office.

That makes me wonder what happens with the other half. Having part of a team work remotely isn't ideal for those people - they end up being left out of things. On the other hand, it doesn't really make sense to just forget everything we've learned from the last year of remote work and force a big percentage o people back to a situation where they're less productive.

I suspect though that the latter is exactly what will happen to some extent based on Google's own statement, which is a shame. But we all have to give things up for work and many Googlers would be very reluctant to leave.

[slavapestov]

> Some of them have kids,

Who takes care of the kids while they’re at the office though?

[vineyardmike]

Teachers usually.

[solipsism]

Google has never had a chopping block. And your speculations are wild. But hey, at least you have those two anecdotes.

[tdeck]

The Google equivalent of a chipping block in most cases is not getting promoted. But Google has a very level-focused culture and many Googlers are highly motivated to keep getting promotions, so the incentives are there.

[solipsism]

The Google equivalent of a chipping block in most cases is not getting promoted

Do tell, given what you know about the Google promotion process, how a choice to work remotely would translate to a decreased likelihood to be promoted (and, importantly, to an unfair degree)?

[tdeck]

Realized I have a typo from relying too heavily on auto-correct. Sorry about that.

I worked at Google for four years. I've seen many people I know basically "play it safe" by making conservative decisions in order to minimize the likelihood of hurting one's promo chances. Despite all the talk about this, nobody really knows for sure what will affect their promo. For example, people will stay on a team they hate rather than risk "resetting the promo clock". There is also a general understanding that being outside the Bay Area hurts your career growth.

Given these tendencies and the fact that people who work remotely often find themselves more isolated than their in-office colleagues, I fully expect that people will hesitate to adopt remote work if they're not in the majority.

[yamellasmallela]

If you don't get promotions you lose certain stock grants which greatly reduces your pay

The entire system is a scam and built specifically to keep you at google and drinking the kool aid

[DeRock]

I think that 60% figure is misleading, it must represent people who have just come in to pick something up or drop something off. I'm working at another company in the valley, that is much more HW oriented, and its less than 10% of employees who are coming in with any regularity.

[joshuamorton]

Almost no one is back in the office currently. The 60% is people who are expressing interest in returning to the office according to employee surveys.

[throwaway197812]

The actual quote is "In fact, in places where we’ve been able to reopen Google offices in a voluntary capacity, we’ve seen nearly 60% of Googlers choosing to come back to the office." That doesn't sound like surveys; I think the 60% of people came to the office once or twice interpretation is more likely.

(Also possible that the offices that were opened were more heavy on hardware / "lab" roles, so while maybe it was officially "voluntary", those people effectively had to choose between coming back to the office or doing fake / busy work at home.)

[joshuamorton]

I think the thing you may be missing is that almost all of those offices are in Europe, Asia, or Oceania. I know my coworkers (I work at Google) in those locations are largely back in the office some, and excited by that.

Having worked from the Zurich office myself previously, most people are within walking/biking/a 5 minute train ride to the office, so commute concerns that we have in the US aren't relevant.

Similarly, most people in those locations live in apartments or condos and so may not have a space to make a home office. Returning to the office to make use of the (superior) workspace in the office. I can say that for example on my team, around half of my coworkers (whose offices are open) are consistently in the office.

[joshuamorton]

> I just don't get why they insist on keeping people in a seat? At least for google, offering all these on-site only perks is just a scheme to keep employees at work for as long as possible.

Fwiw I find the opposite to be true: I have had a much easier time disconnecting from work when my workspace wasn't in my bedroom.

[davidmargolin]

did you even read it? Google is committing to offering fully remote opportunities now.

[ssharp]

They are offering some, whereas other roles are clearly needing to adapt to some consistent in-office time.

It will be interesting to see how all this ultimately plays out. My best guess is that companies like Shopify, who are fully committing to remote work, with in-office options, are going to end up with better retention. However, it also seems plausible that places requiring in-office schedules will simply attract people wanting that and the places offering remote will attract people wanting that.

From what I see, there is a pretty clear line in the sand between folks that want an office and folks that don't. While a 3/2 hybrid schedule may be better than in the office 5 days a week, it's still quite a bit worse than being remote 5 days a week if that's your preference.

I've been working remotely for the past three years and it's crazy to think back how relatively rare of an opportunity it was when I started doing it. It's everywhere now and a ton of people across the world have gotten the opportunity to try it out. You hear a lot about how COVID accelerated a lot transformations by 3-5 years. I think it accelerated remote work by at least a decade, probably more.

[tdeck]

Just a friendly reminder that the HN site guidelines discourage comments that ask "did you even read it?"

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[wildrhythms]

Why not give employees the choice? Google already claims to hire 'the best'; do they not trust 'the best' to capably manage their own productivity wrt wherever they decide to work?

[Smaug123]

Well, it's explicitly stated that productivity is not their top priority, right? "We’ll move to a hybrid work week where most Googlers spend approximately three days in the office and two days wherever they work best." That's an explicit recognition that they're expecting not to get the best work from a bunch of people for approximately three days a week; presumably senior management is fine with this, or they wouldn't have done it or said it.

[gjm11]

They're explicitly recognizing that for three days a week, a bunch of people will not be where they individually work best.

That doesn't necessarily mean their top priority isn't productivity, because the productivity of an organization is not simply the sum of the individual, independent productivities of its members.

They may, for instance, believe something along the following lines. 1. All else being equal, most people are more productive individually at home than in the office. 2. Individuals' productivity in the office is higher when other people are also in the office, because they can cooperate. 3. Individuals' productivity is better directed (i.e., the stuff they're productive at is a better match for the actual needs of the company) if at least some of the time they're physically in the same place as their colleagues. Without that, they may work more efficiently but they are less likely to be working on the right things. 4. Because of 3 (backed up by 2) the amount of value provided to the company is greater when employees spend some time together in the office.

Whether any of that is actually true is another matter. And of course they may also just like the power-trip of seeing all their minions working busily. But it's not true that the words you quoted have to mean that productivity isn't what they care about most.

(In case it matters to anyone: I am not a Googler, have no interest in watching minions working busily and furthermore have no minions, and much prefer working from home though whether I'm actually more productive there I don't know.)

[UncleMeat]

That seems to be what they are doing. They are estimating that 20% of the company will be permanently remote. Last I saw, something like 25% of the company expressed interest in permanent remote work. So in most cases people will have the choice.