Google Delays Return To Office and Eyes 'Flexible Work Week' (nytimes.com) 27
With the pandemic still in full swing and the first doses of a coronavirus vaccine just starting to ship in the United States, Google has pushed back the planned return to the office by a few months, to September 2021. From a report: But even as it extends the remote work period for most of its staff, Google is laying out a series of proposed changes that may substantially alter how its employees and people at other technology companies will work. In an email to the staff on Sunday night, Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google's parent company, Alphabet, said the company was testing the idea of a "flexible workweek" once it is safe to return to the office. Under the pilot plan, employees would be expected to work at least three days a week in the office for "collaboration days" while working from home the other days. "We are testing a hypothesis that a flexible work model will lead to greater productivity, collaboration, and well-being," Mr. Pichai wrote in an email obtained by The New York Times. "No company at our scale has ever created a fully hybrid work force model -- though a few are starting to test it -- so it will be interesting to try."
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WTF is "Orange45"?
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Orange45 is a kind of venereal disease that causes hands to shrink and mushrooms to grow below the waist.
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Easy. All you need to do is to rapidly wipe off the mushrooms with your hands a few times a day. I hear that there are many websites that help you with this.
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That's also the day Dementia46 arrives.
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Get back to me in a year and we'll see how Biden is doing.
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Got nothing to do with me, just send your report to your handlers.
What about people that moved....? (Score:3)
Are they doing to require those folks to move BACK just so they can work from the office 2-3 days a week?
In my jobs over the past decade or so, 99% of the peel I work with are not even located within 100 mi of me.
I've worked in this manner with folks spread all across the US and we've had no problems with massively large projects, across multiple data centers, etc.
I suppose for some, that being in an office and seeing other faces might be beneficial, but for many of us, there really is no need to ever really set food back in a formal office again for 99.99% of their work time.
I hope there are places that will take this into account and treat the workers more on a per person basis, as that what works for one person, may actually be detrimental to another with regards to working from home/office.
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Maybe the slashdot gnomes should give you a do-over.
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you can fly in for an 72 work session (free airport pick + free food at office) and we can get you corp rates on air that come with full fair rules.
You are an outlier. (Score:2)
And that is why we are being offshored so much.
If any of you locals had any brains, you would be screaming as to why you need to be in the office talking to your colleagues.
Too bad, 1997 called and said, "You snooze; you lose!"
I was back there. It was "send shit to India for code monkey work and at half price!"
Then it became, "they are pretty good. We don't need competent Americans anymore."
And no
Re:You are an outlier. (Score:4, Insightful)
Rock star Indian developers don't stay in India long. They move to a Western country so they can make Western salaries. Plus, creativity is strongly discouraged in Indian office culture, giving an additional incentive for those who can leave to do so.
If offshoring were easy, or even worthwhile, it would have been done long ago. It's been possible for a couple of decades now. It's just that it typically goes so poorly that the company pulls the work back in house.
Regarding the modern engineer hiring process, gotta grind the Leetcode, bro. That's the only thing that matters anymore.
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In the sase of Silicon Valley, we've seen article out there that show people during the pandemic have been moving out of SF and the surrounding areas, to places in the US with lower cost of living and better living conditions.
Are they doing to require those folks to move BACK just so they can work from the office 2-3 days a week?
They don't have to require it, those people will be back once COVID is over and they can return to the bars and restaurant and everything else they moved to the city for in the first place. Most people didn't move from Small Town, America to a crowded and expensive urban area just to get a job, they moved there because they like what the city has to offer.
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Depends on the job. Those that need onsite access will likely have remained close by. Those who moved away typically will have moved to the surrounding region - if you have to be in the office 2 days a week, a 1 hour commute is much easier to contemplate than having to be in the office 5 days a week with a 1 hour commute.
Those that moved out of state are in for a big surprise - while pay may not be cut, the companies know if you moved to the middle of nowhere and have to face a long commute back to Silicon
Permanent WFH (Score:5, Interesting)
My employer has already basically told us that WFH is a permanent thing and that our HQ will never go back to full time work from the office. There will be some requirements for training and big meetings to come to HQ, but that's about it.
I'll be hard pressed to ever take a job that doesn't have significant work from home options.
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Yeah, just make sure you can keep providing the required 10x more value from Muncie, IN than the guy from Mumbai, IN getting paid ten times less.
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Yeah, just make sure you can keep providing the required 10x more value from Muncie, IN than the guy from Mumbai, IN getting paid ten times less.
The world is moving to a one world labor pool. It's time we start acting like it. You know that smartphone in your pocket was made in China by someone who works for 10x less than you too. Why are you OK with that? Because you don't want to pay $2000 for it? What American's fail to realize is that you will pay for it one way or the other. And rightfully so. Why does one human deserve to make more than another human just by the lotto of where he/she happened to be born.
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Yup, I don't disagree actually. I agree. There should be one labor pool.
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And in the long run having the poor people in thevthird world move up into the middle class is better for the rich West. That means for now the money flows in that direction and our growth stagnates a bit. The run is over we have reached the top but with a but of effort we can stay there somit is not too bad
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Yeah, just make sure you can keep providing the required 10x more value from Muncie, IN than the guy from Mumbai, IN getting paid ten times less.
You and many others appear to assume that IT workers and programmers make up the bulk of the remote workforce. I can assure you from personal experience that you're wrong.
At the aerospace company that employs me, more than 90% of the Engineering organization (by far the largest org in the company) is working from home, and only a small minority are software engineers. IT isn't part of Engineering, and as far as I can tell, many of those people are physically at work much of the time to see to the care and f
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How isn't my point applicable to non-IT jobs? Can they not employ an aerospace engineer to do CATIA or Siemens NX design work from India (granted aerospace has national security implications, but many other types of engineering do not.)
Re: Permanent WFH (Score:2)
Nooo (Score:3)
I've been enjoying the traffic free Bay Area. Oh well, party had to end some time.
Why even bother (Score:2)
They know what everyone is doing all the time anyways.