<story><title>Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-mandates-workers-back-silicon-valley-other-offices-april-4-2022-03-02/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>asdff</author><text>Every single thread I see on this has this exact same comment. It&amp;#x27;s like a bot wrote it. Is it that hard to imagine that an onboarding experience remotely can actually be done well, or that you could actually make friends with people existing solely on zoom? I think people are making that assumption, just because it feels right or maybe because their own org is just throwing juniors by the wayside and hoping covid will end rather than thinking about how to train people electronically from the ground up.&lt;p&gt;Remote work in a lot of roles, especially knowledge working, is just the way forward and will be how these things function in 50 years. Companies that are able to scout talent globally will simply out compete those that insist on a local labor pool. It makes no sense to perpetuate commuting, just in terms of the environmental damage it causes, when we&amp;#x27;ve shown that this work can still be done without having to load a single ~200lb occupant and spend energy moving them + 3000lbs of metal around for two hours a day five days a week. If you are finding your juniors are falling behind, then step up instead of giving up and work hard to come up with a viable pipeline that isn&amp;#x27;t &amp;quot;well hopefully in two months we are back in the office.&amp;quot; Plenty of companies and organizations and research groups have functioned entirely distributed for years now even before covid. It&amp;#x27;s not rocket science.</text></item><item><author>munificent</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; We&amp;#x27;ve proven that the big tech companies can go fully remote and not completely crash and burn, that&amp;#x27;s about it.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Agreed. We&amp;#x27;ve proven that big tech companies can &lt;i&gt;continue&lt;/i&gt; to be productive for &lt;i&gt;up to two years&lt;/i&gt; going remote.&lt;p&gt;I suspect that that doesn&amp;#x27;t generalize very well to being completely remote over the long term. It works well when you already have a bunch of personal relationships between teammates that were established while the company was in-person. And it works well for experienced people that have ramped up. But I think it&amp;#x27;s probably quite a bit harder for people to be productive when they are new to the company, less experienced, and don&amp;#x27;t have that existing foundation to build on.&lt;p&gt;I think it&amp;#x27;s a solvable problem for companies that want to prioritize remote work, but I definitely don&amp;#x27;t think &amp;quot;managed to get through the past two years&amp;quot; means &amp;quot;it&amp;#x27;s a piece of cake&amp;quot;.</text></item><item><author>librish</author><text>I think anyone who&amp;#x27;s claiming that remote work has been &amp;quot;proven&amp;quot; to be better or worse is wrong. There are some studies but they use estimations and proxies, carrying the same flaws as doing performance reviews based on lines of code.&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#x27;ve proven that the big tech companies can go fully remote and not completely crash and burn, that&amp;#x27;s about it. Some people love the lack of commute and less semi-forced hanging out, some people hate onboarding on a new company as a remote person and so on and so on.&lt;p&gt;I personally prefer a company where everyone&amp;#x27;s on site. I want to be able to quickly resolve any issues in person, not over voice call or slack, and I think that an environment where someone can tap me on the shoulder when they need help leads to overall higher productivity, even if individual productivity suffers temporarily.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>onion2k</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Is it that hard to imagine that an onboarding experience remotely can actually be done well, or that you could actually make friends with people existing solely on zoom?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;We don&amp;#x27;t need to imagine it. Those of us who lead teams have tried, and we know it&amp;#x27;s harder to onboard people, and to socialize as a company, when you&amp;#x27;re working remotely.&lt;p&gt;I think the advantages of remote working greatly outweigh the disadvantages, and I will continue to work remotely if I can, but there&amp;#x27;s no need to pretend everything is better. It obviously isn&amp;#x27;t.</text></comment>
<story><title>Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-mandates-workers-back-silicon-valley-other-offices-april-4-2022-03-02/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>asdff</author><text>Every single thread I see on this has this exact same comment. It&amp;#x27;s like a bot wrote it. Is it that hard to imagine that an onboarding experience remotely can actually be done well, or that you could actually make friends with people existing solely on zoom? I think people are making that assumption, just because it feels right or maybe because their own org is just throwing juniors by the wayside and hoping covid will end rather than thinking about how to train people electronically from the ground up.&lt;p&gt;Remote work in a lot of roles, especially knowledge working, is just the way forward and will be how these things function in 50 years. Companies that are able to scout talent globally will simply out compete those that insist on a local labor pool. It makes no sense to perpetuate commuting, just in terms of the environmental damage it causes, when we&amp;#x27;ve shown that this work can still be done without having to load a single ~200lb occupant and spend energy moving them + 3000lbs of metal around for two hours a day five days a week. If you are finding your juniors are falling behind, then step up instead of giving up and work hard to come up with a viable pipeline that isn&amp;#x27;t &amp;quot;well hopefully in two months we are back in the office.&amp;quot; Plenty of companies and organizations and research groups have functioned entirely distributed for years now even before covid. It&amp;#x27;s not rocket science.</text></item><item><author>munificent</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; We&amp;#x27;ve proven that the big tech companies can go fully remote and not completely crash and burn, that&amp;#x27;s about it.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Agreed. We&amp;#x27;ve proven that big tech companies can &lt;i&gt;continue&lt;/i&gt; to be productive for &lt;i&gt;up to two years&lt;/i&gt; going remote.&lt;p&gt;I suspect that that doesn&amp;#x27;t generalize very well to being completely remote over the long term. It works well when you already have a bunch of personal relationships between teammates that were established while the company was in-person. And it works well for experienced people that have ramped up. But I think it&amp;#x27;s probably quite a bit harder for people to be productive when they are new to the company, less experienced, and don&amp;#x27;t have that existing foundation to build on.&lt;p&gt;I think it&amp;#x27;s a solvable problem for companies that want to prioritize remote work, but I definitely don&amp;#x27;t think &amp;quot;managed to get through the past two years&amp;quot; means &amp;quot;it&amp;#x27;s a piece of cake&amp;quot;.</text></item><item><author>librish</author><text>I think anyone who&amp;#x27;s claiming that remote work has been &amp;quot;proven&amp;quot; to be better or worse is wrong. There are some studies but they use estimations and proxies, carrying the same flaws as doing performance reviews based on lines of code.&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#x27;ve proven that the big tech companies can go fully remote and not completely crash and burn, that&amp;#x27;s about it. Some people love the lack of commute and less semi-forced hanging out, some people hate onboarding on a new company as a remote person and so on and so on.&lt;p&gt;I personally prefer a company where everyone&amp;#x27;s on site. I want to be able to quickly resolve any issues in person, not over voice call or slack, and I think that an environment where someone can tap me on the shoulder when they need help leads to overall higher productivity, even if individual productivity suffers temporarily.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>BlargMcLarg</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s mostly a realisation most organisations are illogical, bloated, developer unfriendly and&amp;#x2F;or too undocumented.&lt;p&gt;We applaud ourselves for self-studying, being fairly educated on average with backgrounds in being taught to self-study effectively and finding information online. Yet somehow the idea of juniors doing those exact same things, with or without digital aid of seniors, is unthinkable to many.&lt;p&gt;Surely somewhere this story feels off.</text></comment>