<story><title>Google doesn’t want employees working remotely anymore</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/7/23753323/google-doesnt-want-employees-working-remotely-anymore</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>chank</author><text>&amp;gt; IMO you lose so much more by sacrificing spontaneous conversation &amp;amp; ideation that results.&lt;p&gt;Lots of people say this, but I just don&amp;#x27;t see it. In every office I&amp;#x27;ve worked in in the past 20 years none of this really happened. It was 99.9% distraction. It&amp;#x27;s trivial to hop on a meeting with close collaborators or even non-close ones to bounce ideas off of. It&amp;#x27;s a mask argument for FOMO and the desire of those who simply prefer that environment for various non-collaborative reasons.</text></item><item><author>thatsagreatcomm</author><text>IMO you lose so much more by sacrificing spontaneous conversation &amp;amp; ideation that results. You also lose the ease of just walking over to someone to ask a question. You also lose an unbelievable amount for anyone who lacks experience - training is AWFUL remote. Not even close.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not perfect but a group of aligned people in the same physical working space will just dominate a similar group spread apart that has to use chats &amp;amp; zoom to communicate. Management has got to be seeing this, in various forms, across multiple business segments.</text></item><item><author>t43562</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s a pain when someone in my teams meetings is in the office because of all the noise in the background.  This makes me laugh because it&amp;#x27;s clear that there&amp;#x27;s a lot of distraction going on there.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Communication&amp;quot; can also mean getting distracted or drawn into irrelevant discussion or being continuously interrupted by people wanting something.&lt;p&gt;I think it&amp;#x27;s quite ridiculous to claim to value personal presence in an age where I&amp;#x27;m working with people all day who are in other countries and other offices - even down the hall - and that&amp;#x27;s all happening by chat and email and teams meetings.   I really think it&amp;#x27;s about the way some people manage lazily by looking to see if you&amp;#x27;re typing or not instead of looking at results and understanding the work.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s nice to meet people in person once or twice but I don&amp;#x27;t need to see any of them once a week or once a month.&lt;p&gt;I only manage 3 people but I have to work with a lot of people to get things done and have to understand their personalities and points of view and what they&amp;#x27;re doing up to a point. I can&amp;#x27;t come up with a reason why I would want to be able to look over their shoulder.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>UncleMeat</author><text>I work at Google and I agree with the poster that something significant is lost when you aren&amp;#x27;t physically present near each other.&lt;p&gt;But I am also fully remote at Google and I am never going back. Full remote is too valuable to me. I just think that it is useful to be honest about challenges that some people and teams face with remote work.</text></comment>
<story><title>Google doesn’t want employees working remotely anymore</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/7/23753323/google-doesnt-want-employees-working-remotely-anymore</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>chank</author><text>&amp;gt; IMO you lose so much more by sacrificing spontaneous conversation &amp;amp; ideation that results.&lt;p&gt;Lots of people say this, but I just don&amp;#x27;t see it. In every office I&amp;#x27;ve worked in in the past 20 years none of this really happened. It was 99.9% distraction. It&amp;#x27;s trivial to hop on a meeting with close collaborators or even non-close ones to bounce ideas off of. It&amp;#x27;s a mask argument for FOMO and the desire of those who simply prefer that environment for various non-collaborative reasons.</text></item><item><author>thatsagreatcomm</author><text>IMO you lose so much more by sacrificing spontaneous conversation &amp;amp; ideation that results. You also lose the ease of just walking over to someone to ask a question. You also lose an unbelievable amount for anyone who lacks experience - training is AWFUL remote. Not even close.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not perfect but a group of aligned people in the same physical working space will just dominate a similar group spread apart that has to use chats &amp;amp; zoom to communicate. Management has got to be seeing this, in various forms, across multiple business segments.</text></item><item><author>t43562</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s a pain when someone in my teams meetings is in the office because of all the noise in the background.  This makes me laugh because it&amp;#x27;s clear that there&amp;#x27;s a lot of distraction going on there.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Communication&amp;quot; can also mean getting distracted or drawn into irrelevant discussion or being continuously interrupted by people wanting something.&lt;p&gt;I think it&amp;#x27;s quite ridiculous to claim to value personal presence in an age where I&amp;#x27;m working with people all day who are in other countries and other offices - even down the hall - and that&amp;#x27;s all happening by chat and email and teams meetings.   I really think it&amp;#x27;s about the way some people manage lazily by looking to see if you&amp;#x27;re typing or not instead of looking at results and understanding the work.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s nice to meet people in person once or twice but I don&amp;#x27;t need to see any of them once a week or once a month.&lt;p&gt;I only manage 3 people but I have to work with a lot of people to get things done and have to understand their personalities and points of view and what they&amp;#x27;re doing up to a point. I can&amp;#x27;t come up with a reason why I would want to be able to look over their shoulder.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>garrickvanburen</author><text>Agree.&lt;p&gt;20+ years ago, it was considered good office manners to send an IM asking if someone if they were available before interrupting them with your physical presence.</text></comment>