Google Mandates Workers Back To Silicon Valley, Other Offices From April 4 (reuters.com) 217
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Alphabet's Google from April 4 will require employees back about three days a week in some of its U.S., U.K. and Asia Pacific offices, its first step to end policies that allowed remote work because of COVID-19 concerns. An internal email on Wednesday seen by Reuters told employees in the San Francisco Bay Area that "advances in prevention and treatment, the steady decline in cases we continue to see and the improved safety measures we have implemented ... now mean we can officially begin the transition to the hybrid work week."
Google expects most employees will be in offices about three days a week, with some variance by team and role. Everyone coming to the office must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or have an approved exemption, according to the email from John Casey, Google's vice president of global benefits. Unvaccinated workers without an exemption will be given an option to seek one or apply for permanent remote work. Fully vaccinated workers will not have to wear masks in Bay Area offices, Casey said. Employees not prepared to return April 4 also can seek a remote-work extension, Google said. Google largely has restored office perks such as free meals, massages and transit. But while business visitors and meetings are permitted, employees cannot yet bring back families or children to dine or visit with them.
Google expects most employees will be in offices about three days a week, with some variance by team and role. Everyone coming to the office must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or have an approved exemption, according to the email from John Casey, Google's vice president of global benefits. Unvaccinated workers without an exemption will be given an option to seek one or apply for permanent remote work. Fully vaccinated workers will not have to wear masks in Bay Area offices, Casey said. Employees not prepared to return April 4 also can seek a remote-work extension, Google said. Google largely has restored office perks such as free meals, massages and transit. But while business visitors and meetings are permitted, employees cannot yet bring back families or children to dine or visit with them.
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But why?
Corporation: "Because we said so. If the workers don't like it, they can go work somewhere else."
Re: But why? (Score:3)
And some likely will. WFH will be the next big office perk, and among many engineers who are nit big on forced office social interactions, they will gravitate towards companies that allow it. Google will lose some employees as a result of this decision. I'll be curious to see how many.
Layoffs in disguise (Score:3)
Between mandatory vaccination and having become accustomed to the lack of commute this is almost certainly an attempt to lay off employees by getting them to quit voluntarily.
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Making workers commute to work increases pollution. I guess Google doesn't care about the environment.
Mandatory vaccination isn't about layoffs (Score:2)
Your cynicism is good but it's bent in the wrong direction. Always follow the money. Google spends a ton of money hiring the b
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I used to consider myself a cynic, but since I've seen where unbridled cynicism has dragged the US politically and the unhealthy conspiracy theories cynicism helps maintain, I no longer consider cynicism a good thing about anything.
I have always been, and remain, a skeptic, but I try my hardest to not be cynical about things anymore.
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I don't think so. The ones who quit voluntarily are generally the ones who have good options for jobs elsewhere, i.e. the good workers. The bad workers, who don't have alternatives, will stick around. If they wanted layoffs, they would specifically lay off the bad workers, not encourage the good workers to leave while the bad ones remain.
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It's ironic how you rant about anti-scientific people while being this blatantly anti-scientific.
You are factually, objectively, scientifically wrong.
Regards,
A triple vaccinated dude.
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Why do you care if I live or die? Just let me die. I'm okay with that.
Pureblood, maskless, licking doorknobs, and I'm one of the few people I know who hasn't had the disease, unlike the majority of my tripple-vaxed associates and family members, most of whom caught it after their third shot.
I've never even been tested.
I should probably get tested, though. I understand having no symptoms and feeling great is one of the biggest symptoms of this super deadly disease.
(a non-trumper, but I don't like brandon,
So if you're not vaxed, you can be fully remote (Score:5, Interesting)
But if you did the right thing and got vaccinated, you need to be in the office three days a week. Just fantastic messaging there, Google. Really rewarding the right behavior.
As a reminder, Google has been pouring a ton of money and political capital into building a giant office complex in San Jose for years now. That's what this is about: not worker productivity, or what is right for their workers, but making sure there are enough butts in seats to justify their gigantic real estate plans.
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Is it even legal to put employees in that much danger when working from home is a proven alternative that you are happy to offer to others?
They say there have been advances in treatment, that doesn't mean you can't still get severely ill and suffer long term, probably chronic health problems.
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Being in an office for 8 hours is much more dangerous than going to the grocery store.
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I spend less than an hour in the shop, and 8 hours at work.
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Did "the right" thing? That's laughable.
Anything's laughable if you don't understand it.
The massively overwhelming evidence is that vaccines do no harm in so close to 100% of injections that the difference is irrelevant. The massively overwhelming evidence is that vaccines prevent serious harm and death in a statistically unassailable majority of injections. The massively overwhelming evidence is that vaccines reduce severity of infection and spread in most cases.
So... given that this disease spreads, it's a social concern. Right and wrong
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So again, his assertion it's an objectively wrong choice is correct and I would add rather selfish too.
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There is tremendous value to RL interactions that the WFH zealots dismiss, but it's there.
Companies keep saying this, but when asked for specific examples we get crap like "teamwork" "synergy" "collaboration" or some highly-contrived "You might be talking to a co-worked in the hall and get a million-dollar idea"
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Give examples where remote work let to better teamwork, collaboration, or synergy.
All Glory To the Property Values! (Score:2)
Really looking forward to traffic sucking again because we can't let property values drop. The way you fix this is with laws. Or by sucking it down like you suck down everything else you hate in life because you won't stand up for yourself.
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Yeah, I love it how the raging capitalists preach about how workers need to adapt and embrace change - creative destruction and all that. But once creative destruction comes to their carefully curated empires, they quickly shut up about it.
There's no conspiracy. They just like on-prem more (Score:2, Insightful)
However, my personal experience as well as most data, suggest that most groups work better in offices than full-time remote. We've had the
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You gave another reason elsewhere in your comment
So you see, it's not simply about productivity, it's about control.
Anyways, if a person is chronically unavailable when they are expected to be working from home, then that person doesn't need to be brought into the office to bring them into line, that person probably simply needs to be fired, f
Re: There's no conspiracy. They just like on-prem (Score:2)
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So far, this discussion area is filled with complaints with really weak logic.
We've had the technology for 20 years now to be fully remote. If remote was so much better, it would be much more common, pre-pandemic.
Now that really is some weak logic. It's easy to explain why that didn't happen: bad managers.
To me, if a company says that they can't work effectively with employees at home, that's probably a sign that the managers there are terrible. There are some jobs where you need to be at the office, but not as many as you think.
You're talking wants vs needs (Score:2)
Now that really is some weak logic. It's easy to explain why that didn't happen: bad managers.
To me, if a company says that they can't work effectively with employees at home, that's probably a sign that the managers there are terrible. There are some jobs where you need to be at the office, but not as many as you think.
Nice in theory, but the simple fact is, if you have a large team, some will be better at home, some will be worse. You may be awesome WFH. I don't doubt that. About a dozen of my coworkers aren't...be it they're lazy or have demanding small kids or just focus issues. I wish there wasn't a labor shortage and I could just hire nothing but remote rock stars like you...but we work with what we're given.
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Do you feel like this about Universities? Is it the professors fault students may do worse at home?
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Most of my coworkers can't be trusted to be productive at home
That's a problem with those coworkers. If they can't be trusted to do their jobs, well, there's a solution for that. Hire people who can be trusted. Seriously, we're talking about adults here.
some person they needed was impossible to get ahold of...
How urgent is it? Send me an email, and I'll reply within a day. If it's more urgent, use a more immediate channel (Slack, Teams, etc.). In an emergency, you can make a phone call, even outside working hours. But if you interrupt me like that, it had better be important, and not just a lack of planning on your part.
A
You know there's a global programmers shortage? (Score:2)
Most of my coworkers can't be trusted to be productive at home
That's a problem with those coworkers. If they can't be trusted to do their jobs, well, there's a solution for that. Hire people who can be trusted. Seriously, we're talking about adults here.
It's easy and fun to say my coworkers should be fired. I don't even disagree, but it's easier said than done. First of all, it's tough firing people nowadays. If you've ever been in management at a good company, you know this. Secondly, we have a global programmer shortage for 25 years now. We have perpetually open requisitions and hire horrible people because we need SOMEONE to do the job, so we end up with the "least worst" candidate, including people who can't speak English and bathe once a month an
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If you think the fact business didn't do it means it's better then there's no way you've spent 20 years anywhere.
Your logic flaw (Score:2)
If you think the fact business didn't do it means it's better then there's no way you've spent 20 years anywhere.
If it was better, SOME businesses would have done it and thrived. JBoss famously was globally distributed. They made good products, but I volunteered for them and it's a bunch of prima donnas whining and backstabbing and hating each other. They were less of a team and more of a few superstars running the show while everyone else was scrambling to find a role. It was really a toxic work environment in which terrible people thrived.
There are tons of startups, some would have "cracked the code" and been
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These are all issues to be addressed as part of the move to remote work, rather than reasons why butts must be in seats forever more.
They were all addressed when offices actually started to become standard, they were all addressed when companies became decentralized, they were all addressed when companies became national or international, and oddly enough, they were all addressed in the days of typing pools.
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20 years ago I could not have been as productive fully remote as at the office. Most home internet capacity just wasn't there yet. "10 years ago" would probably be more realistic.
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Not my job. I still have to visit construction sites now and then. I used to do that all across the US, in my current job only locally, but it'd be another level of expense to do it overseas.
I worked a contract there, just before the bug hit (Score:2, Interesting)
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For those who want their job to be their life... (Score:5, Insightful)
... step right up, Google is the place for you!
I never really got the mindset from huge corporates, that employees should consider the company and colleagues "one big family".
A job at a place like this really can become your entire life, if that's what floats your boat, rock on.
For me, I'm massively happy to spend what is the shorter part of an entire day, working hard at my job at HOME.
More productive, less distraction, no commute, I *own* my time - it's up to me how I deliver and so long as I do deliver, everyone is happy.
They don't care if I'm at the office or not - it's as it should be "Can this guy do his job?" "Yes" "Cool, that's all we care about"
Having said that, I work for a huge corporate too and they try their hardest to suck you into "their world" - if I attended every meeting, seminar, lifestyle training, afterwork activity going, I'd get no work done and have no life outside the office.
I mean, I get it, for some, it really does give meaning to their lives, that would otherwise be empty.
For me, not so much - I actively enjoy doing the WORK I do, I do not enjoy "enforced fun" "enforced working hours" "enforced working space".
I also now realise just how much I hated the 9 to 5 office grind, having to sit amongst people I really didn't want to spend any time with, yet ended up spending more time with than friends and family.
Screw that.
Google, expect to lose a LOT of developers...
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Well, duh? That's what the passive paychecks are for. And all the onsite services like meals. Clearly they feel that having a smaller number of hyper-dedicated "bought in" employees works better for them than a larger number of people with average dedication making average pay. But now they're getting the worst of both worlds. Or at the very least, objectively, you can't argue their people are working under
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Sometimes in life you have to do stuff you don't particularly enjoy to earn money to pay the rent so suck it up mate and stop being a child. People in the past had it a damn site worse than us so next time you whinge about doing 8 hours sitting on your arse in an air con office with coffee on tap have a think about people working 12 hours+ a day in the fields or stinking smoke filled factory for slave wages. As still happens now in the far east.
Sometimes in life, people jump to wild conclusions - I've done a LOT of shitty jobs in my time, very shitty.
Just because this happens, it doesn't mean it has to be accepted, right?
If you feel you should count yourself lucky, then good for you - well played, well done!
As for me, I take my chances where I find them - life is a lottery.
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Yeah well good luck with that. Remember though , whether you're working from home 10 miles from the office or 10K miles it makes no difference to your employer in the long run so enjoy your job eventually being outsourced to Bangalore.
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Not all jobs can be outsourced overseas. And even those that are, often work out worse than a work-from-home local.
At least 10% of my job cannot be outsourced overseas, as that portion requires being at a site of work. The other 90%, I'm willing to bet I'm better at it than even good engineers in Bangal
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If the only thing keeping your job from being outsourced is the fact that you're present...
I would find a new job,. because you're going to be outsourced.
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Sometimes in life you have to do stuff you don't particularly enjoy to earn money to pay the rent
and sometimes you don't
It's "on" isn't it? They're all having a crack. (Score:4)
Australia in particular, we were always backwards.
Plethora of people are talking about being dragged back into the office here in Aus, many of which could work from home indefinitely.
Some 5 days, some 3, very few, 2 or less.
They want their money churning through the cities again.
Unless people say "no" or in the very least "why?" they'll keep doing it.
You need to start quitting, you need to start saying no, or they'll unwind the whole damn thing.
I'm hearing return to the office across basically the whole planet right now, every type of job, every business, many cities. Frustrated people are being pulled in to sit in traffic or on trains for hours at a time for little to no value at all.
The REAL reason companies don't want to remote (Score:5, Interesting)
The real reason companies don't want you to remote to work is simple.
At first it seemed like a great idea, people were often MORE productive at home than at work, less distractions, feeling more rested and could produce better results as a result of less distractions at work. Google and many other companies was pleasantly surprised and offered people to work from home in the future more often, my big company did too.
But all that changed when they discovered the "great resignation" or "reset" if you like.
More and more workers got better, they discovered better pay elsewhere, they started switching jobs, they got more free time to think about their life and less travelling time and expenses, got to spend more time with their families and other things they otherwise would have no time for.
Companies don't like that part, because not only do they lose employees to other companies, but they have to be competitive about wages, and if you hit companies on their bottom line, that's when the friendliness towards your workforce quickly vanish, because they LIKE that they are in control of you, that you're too exhausted to seek work somewhere else, that you are too exhausted to "think" about your options, and god forbid such silly thoughts as getting better pay somewhere else.
So that "remote" idea went sour real quick for them.
Let's not go back... (Score:2)
Two years of remote working - and remote teaching/studying. It would be very easy to fall back into old patterns, but...let's not.
In my case, as a college prof who teaches programming: In the pre-Covid days, "flipped classroom" just did not work. Students would not reliably prepare themselves before coming to practical sessions. However, students who started while we were teaching partially or entirely remotely - they started my courses with flipped classroom. Now that they have sampled the fruits, they d
Some people are herd animals (Score:2)
They really do work best in a dedicated environment where they can feel the presence of the colleagues.
Others of us are not. We do well to recognise this doesn't make us better - or worse - just different. Good managers will allow their workers to choose the style that works for them, retaining the right to demand the return to the office those who demonstrably goof off in works time. Of course this requires competent managers; there's a theory that they exist...
Oh look another american company being a dictator (Score:2)
Answer Why First. (Score:2)
"now mean we can officially begin the transition to the hybrid work week."
Ah no. Not quite.
It now means that you can sit and have valid discussions as to why you have to transition "back", at all.
This would be different if we were sitting on the ass end of two weeks to slow the spread. Kind of hard to argue against a 2-year long remote work study in which Capitalism did not collapse and die, especially against the incessant demands to curb and eliminate pollution. Won't be long before Generation Green starts taxing corporations for that luxury of a work commute they really can
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Yup. A good chunk of the Millennial cohort grew up with distance work/learning, cloud, and so on. They're fundamentally used to being able to pull out a phone, tablet or laptop and do what they need to do, wherever they happen to be.
And that cohort is now starting to filter into management. The revolution probably would have started in a decade or two anyway.
And as you say, we've just had two years to demonstrate that, for a lot of jobs, remote works better, not only 'just as well.'
Not ready to change (Score:2)
We've had generations of people that only know how to do things via "going to work" - the fully remote work experience is still alien and inferior to them
Some people genuinely perform better in the office others are clinging to "bing in the office" like some readers still cling to physical books or drivers to a manual gearbox.
Also remote work affects some regional management controls and they need justification for having a large office.
The pandemic has caused a radical change for most and they are no
Good luck with that Google (Score:2)
A lot of people have gotten comfortable working from home and have little or no desire to return to an office. Just the cost alone makes it frightening for some. Where I live the cost of gas has just about exactly doubled since the pandemic began. So it would cost me twice as much money to drive to an office...to do work that I perform perfectly well from home.
Wait. (Score:2)
At some point, there's going to be a push of outsourcing that will be disguised as 'remote work' in a race to the lowest salary again as lots of places did with H1Bs.
Some states are freaking out and changing tax laws about days worked and income tax - YES, always working in one place wo
Marked against EGS Score? (Score:2)
Is this marked against Googles EGS scorecard?
Justify Building Purchaes that Cause Homelessness (Score:2)
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Does Google get any credit for this? (It's a loan, not a donation.)
https://www.mv-voice.com/news/... [mv-voice.com]
Happening Other Places Too (Score:2)
1. New employees get introduced and integrated into their team cultures.
2. They have immediate and personal access to a mentor, one who can check on them once in awhile.
3. If fresh out of college, they learn the discipline of getting up, getting cleaned up/dressed up (shi
Real Estate prices (Score:2)
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Only if you're a manager.
Re: It's almost as if (Score:4, Insightful)
Only if you're a shitty manager or have no real leadership skills or qualities. My work has gotten more out of me from me working remote than ever while also increasing my quality of life. No commute, more time with kids and wife, dinner earlier, less impact on the environment since I'm not driving nearly as much. All in all the one and only downside is less face time with coworkers and less fave to face social interaction. I can live with those downsides indefinitely.
Re: It's almost as if (Score:2)
Re: It's almost as if (Score:2)
Trickle down economics is bullshit and you make a lot of assumptions in your statement. The only business that is losing out from me not commuting are the gas stations.
Re: It's almost as if (Score:2)
Door dash has really taken off since the pandemic. My rent in an urban area has went down while it goes up in the suburbs. I go out to restaurants all the time during lunch. Modern new suburbs have more retail and mini mall spaces and these are doing well for wife and husband who want a door dash today or have time after work to go out and eat after a long day.
I live near a park and a gym a few blocks away. I see people now in gym outfits jogging and heading there during their lunches too. It sounds to me s
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Working longer hours doesn't necessarily equate to getting more out of you or getting better work out of you. Such an American work ethos fallacy.
Where did he say he was working longer hours? He might even be getting more done in less time, not having his energy drained by a debilitating commute, among other things.
Re: It's almost as if (Score:2)
Still learning to read? I didn't say I was working longer hours. They are getting better and more work out of me simply because my quality life has improved.
Re: It's almost as if (Score:5, Interesting)
Or, that corporate really hates having a big and empty building, and wants desperately to regain control of the hiring process via region restriction, so it can claim it needs H1B visas again. (Because it 'Just can't find a
Qualified Applicants!') So it can once again start depressing wages.
I hope it tanks them hard.
That genie is out of the bottle.
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If WFH worked well, corporations would hire remote foreigners instead of importing H1Bs to work in offices.
Many companies tried WFH in the pre-pandemic era, and they mostly either abandoned the policy or bogged down in miscommunication and lack of innovation. Yahoo is a company that did poorly with WFH. By the time they forced everyone back into the office, they were too far behind to recover.
Google would be foolish to continue to pay people Silicon Valley salaries to sit at home. Google's employees need
Re: It's almost as if (Score:5, Insightful)
Yahoo is a company that did poorly with WFH. By the time they forced everyone back into the office, they were too far behind to recover.
That's a terrible example. Yahoo already had no reason to still exist by that point. There wasn't going to be any recovering anyway.
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That's a terrible example. Yahoo already had no reason to still exist by that point.
Microsoft thought they were worth $45B.
Re: It's almost as if (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a big difference between working from home, and remote work in a far different timezone. Or working from home, and remote work with a language and culture barrier thrown in the mix.
I currently work for a local company, but I'm still working from home. There's still a great deal of real-time collaboration that occurs using Slack, Zoom, and occasionally e-mail. It would greatly slow down much of our work if someone was in a vastly different timezone.
I love WFH, but I do have to admit it does throw up a few impediments to seamless collaboration. But honestly, I feel for myself that part of that is made up with a greater ability to focus on concentrate on my work while I'm sitting in a very comfortable environment. I realize that this isn't true of everyone who don't have as much elbow room or privacy as I enjoy, of course.
I think my company is taking a fairly pragmatic approach. Most employees will be working in office, but with a flexible WFH/office mix, and they've started a new program for more people that want to work remotely exclusively, since we've definitely proven that's actually feasible at this point.
BTW, if you think Yahoo imploded because of WFH (it sounds like that's what you're implying at least), you're discounting an awful lot of other factors.
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There's a big difference between working from home, and remote work in a far different timezone. Or working from home, and remote work with a language and culture barrier thrown in the mix.
Having half a team in a different timezone is a pain. (defacto, you have two teams). Having a whole team in a different timezone can work (possibly managed remotely).
Re: It's almost as if (Score:2)
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WFH is fine if everyone is experienced and has a well defined role. In our office WFH basically killed our ability to hire new talent or grow interns. They just could not learn the job over teams. Now every single person is critical because we have had two years of natural attrition with basically no ability to replace the people lost. It's not a matter of pay or benefits, my company is does well on that account and the employees generally rate it as a very favorable workplace.
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This is a failure of your office to adapt their onboarding and training programs, not an indication that WFH is fundamentally flawed.
It's like rejecting a self-powered plow because you can't figure out how to hook horses up to it.
Re: It's almost as if (Score:2)
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I love WFH, but I do have to admit it does throw up a few impediments to seamless collaboration.
Can you list some of these impediments?
You're forgetting about time zones (Score:2)
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I don't know how things work in India, but in the Philippines, there are many office buildings that start work at 6 pm to sync with the 9 hour time difference from California. And unlike cricket-playing Indians, Filipinos speak proper American English (tho you need to get uzed to their fonetic spelling).
Re: You're forgetting about time zones (Score:2)
Re: You're forgetting about time zones (Score:2)
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In the case of some of the internationals I have worked for, that's precisely what they do do. And it works.
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Google would be foolish to continue to pay people Silicon Valley salaries to sit at home. Google's employees need to go back to the office, or they will be replaced by workers in the Midwest or Mumbai.
That is about the most pathetic justification I've ever heard.
If the only reason to keep American workers is a nice building, cool office chair, and water cooler gossip, then the American worker should expect to be replaced.
Soon.
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If WFH worked well, corporations would hire remote foreigners instead of importing H1Bs to work in offices.
Maybe WFH just doesn't work well for foreigners.
(Seriously, what with time zone differences, language barriers, different legal jurisdictions, and lack of cultural knowledge, I'm sure that importing them physically helps alleviate at least some of those barriers.)
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If WFH worked well, corporations would hire remote foreigners instead of importing H1Bs to work in offices.
Maybe WFH just doesn't work well for foreigners.
(Seriously, what with time zone differences, language barriers, different legal jurisdictions, and lack of cultural knowledge, I'm sure that importing them physically helps alleviate at least some of those barriers.)
Whereas, to be clear, for domestic WFH workers there is nothing to alleviate.
Re: It's almost as if (Score:2)
That was big 20 years ago. Not so much today as the quality of work overseas is poorer than domestically. If anything I see alot of employers in the states hire domestically but all can apply including rural areas
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I was in downtown SF recently. For the city to survive, they need workers to spend at least 3 days a week in the office. That is essentially what is going on here; they can’t get back to normalcy if you don’t have at least 50% office occupancy.
I’m not defending the approach, but I do understand it. There are a whole lot of things broken, and the fact that remote work has suddenly been embraced makes it really hard for some cities, and different/good/bad for others. It is the kind of th
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I was in downtown SF recently. For the city to survive, they need workers to spend at least 3 days a week in the office.
I've been wondering whether the amount of time spent in the office could be lower than that. Maybe when the team comes in to meet in the office they will then all go out to lunch together. Or go for drinks afterwards.
Basically the team meetup day might really focus on the social interaction - that being the point of being physically together.
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I was in downtown SF recently. For the city to survive, they need workers to spend at least 3 days a week in the office. That is essentially what is going on here; they can’t get back to normalcy if you don’t have at least 50% office occupancy.
I’m not defending the approach, but I do understand it. There are a whole lot of things broken, and the fact that remote work has suddenly been embraced makes it really hard for some cities, and different/good/bad for others. It is the kind of thing that needs to change over a decade and not a couple years to avoid society problems.
I’m not coming back to the office though, so it will be interesting to see how this plays out in the end.
Yeah, it's two sides of a coin.
The mayor basically said "the small businesses that support office workers need office workers", but the implication is "you need to spend more money than you need to, by working in an office". Home-cooked lunches and coffee and whatnot are significantly cheaper. The mayor wants to effectively force people to transfer their wealth to businesses that only need to exist because they used to. Buggy whips.
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Home-cooked lunches and coffee and whatnot are significantly cheaper.
The people working in the offices can't bring their lunch with them?
The mayor wants to effectively force people to transfer their wealth to businesses that only need to exist because they used to.
How is the mayor forcing anyone to do anything? As I said above, can't the people bring their own lunches to work?
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Sure, folks can bring in lunch from home. That said, how many people will have time to do so after losing an hour and a half to their daily commute?
Besides, the local restaurants will have a better variety of food options. The local deli next my office is counting on you getting bored with eating a ham and cheese sandwich at your desk and buying something better from them.
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Sure, folks can bring in lunch from home. That said, how many people will have time to do so after losing an hour and a half to their daily commute?
Besides, the local restaurants will have a better variety of food options. The local deli next my office is counting on you getting bored with eating a ham and cheese sandwich at your desk and buying something better from them.
All I hear are excuses. I drive into work every day and bring my lunch every day. Been doing it for well over a decade. I alternate between frozen meals and sandwiches. Never been a problem. Maybe these people should be better organized and plan ahead.
No one said people can't eat out once in a while, but claiming the mayor is forcing people to eat at restaurants when back at the office is just an excuse.
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I do the same. It doesn't take long to make a sandwich for work and it save me money. It also gives me my whole lunch hour as downtime rather then driving to a place, finding parking, coming back, finding parking, etc.
Re: It's almost as if (Score:2)
buggy whips
That's not quite the same here. The problem is that in many places, the service industry has provided a large number of (usually shitty) jobs for unskilled workers. Businesses which located near the Office districts were able to generally charge more, and often pay more, than the same type of shop would in a more industrial or retail focused area.
So now we have a lot of people who are sitting idle, supported on various types of assistance. As long as these programs continue, it creates the appearance of th
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...remote "work" is a misnomer, and that it's more productive to be in person.
No, not if you have the right kind of job and the right workers. Just before Covid I was already managing a team of good people where half were remote all the time and others were off and on. Other than not seeing them in their cubes, I was able to keep up with them just fine. If you were remote you joined the meetings online instead of in person. It didn't matter.
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Before the pandemic, if I was
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...remote "work" is a misnomer, and that it's more productive to be in person.
Google forcing people back to the office w/o considering ... anything ... doesn't prove that it is less productive to do work remotely - not on its own, at least.
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So they need to commute for about an hour to go to an office to log into a computer that may be a half a world away, in an office that is either too hot or too cold for their personal comfort, Need to deal with the random small talk going around them... Because the manager is too lazy to give the employee a call to see how they are doing at the task assigned to them.
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That is a dangerous way to think about it. I would suggest studying some history of the last 30 years.
Re: Google has still been Google...haven't noticed (Score:2)