<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>dcow</author><text>I feel like this discussion is missing the hybrid part of the policy. 2 days at home for flow state work and 3 at the office to collaborate doesn&amp;#x27;t seem crazy. Maybe it should be 2-3 instead of 3-2 for some people, but in my experience the biggest productivity disruptor is meetings. And you’re only getting two “no meetings” days a week anyway. And the biggest downside from working at home is the hit to socializing and collaboration. You’ll hear anecdotes for days from both sides. A hybrid policy addresses both perspectives.&lt;p&gt;Now if you just want to work for a fully remote company or in a remote role, why not take a job at a place where that’s the philosophy? And on the flip side, if companies want productive employees over the age of 28, and deliberately don’t want to be remote, maybe they should start providing offices instead of desk clusters…</text></item><item><author>bluefishinit</author><text>One of the many benefits of working from home is that writing great software is heavily dependent on getting into a good &amp;quot;flow&amp;quot;. Commuting alone absolutely destroys that for most people. When you work from home you drop so many stages and so much stress out of your morning routine. I find myself being productive within an hour of waking up. That&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;definitely&lt;/i&gt; not the case if I&amp;#x27;m forced into an office. Especially if people start chatting me up once I get there (which always happens). Commuting home after a long day is soul destroying as well. It&amp;#x27;s time stolen from my personal life.</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>hedora</author><text>I did the force hybrid thing for a while (team showed up on the same days).&lt;p&gt;It was awful for productivity.    One in-person day per week would have been OK, but the other time in the office was a waste.  The only work that got done that day could have been done via a few scheduled 30 minute 1:1’s.&lt;p&gt;If management must force people into the same spot, I’d suggest considering a “Thursday we grab beers or go hiking, etc at noon” schedule.&lt;p&gt;It would be better for morale and productivity, and also cheaper than maintaining an office.  They could even give everyone a free coworking account.</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>dcow</author><text>I feel like this discussion is missing the hybrid part of the policy. 2 days at home for flow state work and 3 at the office to collaborate doesn&amp;#x27;t seem crazy. Maybe it should be 2-3 instead of 3-2 for some people, but in my experience the biggest productivity disruptor is meetings. And you’re only getting two “no meetings” days a week anyway. And the biggest downside from working at home is the hit to socializing and collaboration. You’ll hear anecdotes for days from both sides. A hybrid policy addresses both perspectives.&lt;p&gt;Now if you just want to work for a fully remote company or in a remote role, why not take a job at a place where that’s the philosophy? And on the flip side, if companies want productive employees over the age of 28, and deliberately don’t want to be remote, maybe they should start providing offices instead of desk clusters…</text></item><item><author>bluefishinit</author><text>One of the many benefits of working from home is that writing great software is heavily dependent on getting into a good &amp;quot;flow&amp;quot;. Commuting alone absolutely destroys that for most people. When you work from home you drop so many stages and so much stress out of your morning routine. I find myself being productive within an hour of waking up. That&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;definitely&lt;/i&gt; not the case if I&amp;#x27;m forced into an office. Especially if people start chatting me up once I get there (which always happens). Commuting home after a long day is soul destroying as well. It&amp;#x27;s time stolen from my personal life.</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>SketchySeaBeast</author><text>&amp;gt; Now if you just want to work for a fully remote company or in a remote role, why not take a job at a place where that’s the philosophy?&lt;p&gt;Because during COVID a lot of companies started saying that&amp;#x27;s their new philosophy and are reneging on it now that they feel they can, and a lot of us shuffled around during that time.  People hired onto remote teams and are getting rug pulled now.</text></comment>