Google To Include Office Attendance In Performance Reviews (cnbc.com) 135
Google is implementing stricter measures to enforce office attendance, including tracking badge data, confronting employees who don't come in as required, and factoring attendance into performance reviews. CNBC reports: Google's chief people officer, Fiona Cicconi, wrote an email to employees at the end of the day on Wednesday, which included doubling down on office attendance, reasoning that "there's just no substitute for coming together in person." "Of course, not everyone believes in 'magical hallway conversations,' but there's no question that working together in the same room makes a positive difference," Cicconi's email read. "Many of the products we unveiled at I/O and Google Marketing Live last month were conceived, developed and built by teams working side by side."
Her note said the company will start including their three days per week as a part of their performance reviews and teams will start sending reminders to workers "who are consistently absent from the office." Cicconi even asked already-approved remote workers to reconsider. "For those who are remote and who live near a Google office, we hope you'll consider switching to a hybrid work schedule. Our offices are where you'll be most connected to Google's community." A separate internal document showed that already-approved remote workers may be subject to reevaluation if the company determines "material changes in business need, role, team, structure or location."
In the U.S., the company will periodically track whether employees are adhering to the office attendance policy using badge data, and executives are currently reviewing local requirements to implement in other countries, one of the documents states. If workers don't follow the policy after an extended period of time, human resources will reach out about "next steps." Going forward, Cicconi said, new fully remote work will only be granted "by exception only." In a statement to CNBC, Google spokesperson Ryan Lamont said, "our hybrid approach is designed to incorporate the best of being together in person with the benefits of working from home for part of the week. Now that we're more than a year into this way of working, we're formally integrating this approach into all of our workplace policies."
Lamont added that the badge data viewed by company leaders is aggregate data and not individualized.
Her note said the company will start including their three days per week as a part of their performance reviews and teams will start sending reminders to workers "who are consistently absent from the office." Cicconi even asked already-approved remote workers to reconsider. "For those who are remote and who live near a Google office, we hope you'll consider switching to a hybrid work schedule. Our offices are where you'll be most connected to Google's community." A separate internal document showed that already-approved remote workers may be subject to reevaluation if the company determines "material changes in business need, role, team, structure or location."
In the U.S., the company will periodically track whether employees are adhering to the office attendance policy using badge data, and executives are currently reviewing local requirements to implement in other countries, one of the documents states. If workers don't follow the policy after an extended period of time, human resources will reach out about "next steps." Going forward, Cicconi said, new fully remote work will only be granted "by exception only." In a statement to CNBC, Google spokesperson Ryan Lamont said, "our hybrid approach is designed to incorporate the best of being together in person with the benefits of working from home for part of the week. Now that we're more than a year into this way of working, we're formally integrating this approach into all of our workplace policies."
Lamont added that the badge data viewed by company leaders is aggregate data and not individualized.
My Coworkers are on Another Continent. (Score:3, Insightful)
An 8 hour time difference and 36 hour travel time rather makes "coming together in person" not a thing. I could come into the office, but it would it would remain a place to sit and make calls at the end of the work day when my coworkers get out of bed.
I see moves towards mandating office attendance where I work. It hasn't happened yet, but when it does, it's going to be a massive waste of my time.
Re:My Coworkers are on Ice and Quaaludes (Score:1)
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You must work in HR since you are to cowardly to put your name to your trolling.
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Re: My Coworkers are on Ice and Quaaludes (Score:2)
He'll just post that Dilbert character in a bathrobe carrying a mug of lukewarm coffee
Re:My Coworkers are on Ice and Quaaludes (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree.
Yes, I know that you tried to make a snide comment, but in this economy, if you want to retain the best, you have to offer them what they want. You want me to work for you, you let me put my cadaver where I want to. Else I'm working for some other company.
You tried outsourcing my job across the ocean with the result that you couldn't get the quality and response times you wanted and now you're forced to insource again. Allow me to try the same. Because not having to come to the office means that moving is no longer a problem for me. I will work from where I am, no matter where you are.
The market just got a lot bigger. Yes, for both of us. But I'm kinda sure that it's harder for you to find a replacement for me than it's for me to find a replacement for you.
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[...] in this economy, if you want to retain the best, you have to offer them what they want. You want me to work for you, you let me put my cadaver where I want to. Else I'm working for some other company.
"The best" have always been able to write their own ticket to do what they want, when, and where, they want to do it.
Many senior staff (not necessarily superstar talent, but just people who are comfortably competent at their jobs) perform better when left alone. More average workers, and especially junior staffers, benefit from having other more talented/senior staff around to teach them how to do their jobs better.
It isn't about what is best for the individual performers, it is about what is best for the
Re: My Coworkers are on Ice and Quaaludes (Score:4, Interesting)
I see the "mentorship" argument being made a lot now that the "creativity" argument for in office work has been increasingly debunked with numbers.
My experience has been very much the opposite of the argument being made here: mentoring and crosstrsining has been radically easier remote. To the point my team does very little of it when we're actually in the office. The ability to just screeshare and have someone hover, while I occasionally narrate or get asked questions, has been fantastically productive for training and mentoring. It also means I don't have to allocate time that's effectively a total loss like I would in the office.
The impression I get is that the real struggle with remote work for management, other than the significant portion of people that were using work as a social club and now are mortified they can't just wander around talking on the company dime, is that managing remote workers requires more intentionality. Training is easier remote, but have to make sure older employees are actually doing it and set expectations that younger employees will be able to demonstrate what they learn. This requires more effort for management, and frankly better understanding of what they're managing. It's a different set of skills than the current crop of management has, and it'll probably take a decade for them to age out and a new crop of management to take hold before the normalization of remote work is complete. Hybrid work is a crutch for management, not employees.
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This requires more effort for management, and frankly better understanding of what they're managing.
This is the key.
A lot of middle management actually have little to no idea what their team do day to day, and in the office, those managers can just wander around pretending to manage the team while actually doing nothing except wasting everyone's time. But when everyone work remotely, it becomes painfully obvious that those managers add nothing of value to the team, and they are the most vocal in calling people to return to office.
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>This requires more effort for management, and frankly better understanding of what they're managing. It's a different set of skills than the current crop of management has, and it'll probably take a decade for them to age out and a new crop of management to take hold before the normalization of remote work is complete.
So, you are saying it's not only a different set of skills, though. And it's not really a time thing, either. As you said it *requires more effort* and a *better understanding*. Neither
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It isn't about what is best for the individual performers, it is about what is best for the entire organization.
We already know what is best for worker productivity. Productivity overall in the US went through the roof when we all starting working from home. Nonfarm labor productivity went up about 6% almost immediately. That is the same growth we had seen from 2014 - 2020, but this time in just a few months. Productivity stayed high for two years, but started dropping in early 2022. "Coincidentally" that is when companies started cracking down on WFH. Today nonfarm labor productivity sits right where the trendline w
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"The best" have always been able to write their own ticket to do what they want, when, and where, they want to do it.
Companies don't just have to worry about their special snowflakes. That have to worry about the top 20% of their workers who are doing 80% of the work. These employees often if not rarely get special treatment, so they need to follow corporate policies. And if they don't like those policies, they have an easy time finding work elsewhere.
The big shakeup in the marketplace will revolve around where this top 20% of talent decides to work going forward. If enough of them require WFH or at least hybrid, companie
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Right but we're not talking about the elite bestest workers here. Trust me, they are always the exception anyway to company policies and they'll just make them a roll that has different responsibilities so they can do what they do the way they do it the way they want to do it.
What it is, is more medicore staff felt special for a little while thanks to covid, and thought they were too important to have to conform to regular rules now that they've had special treatment, and they're fighting it. Unfortunately
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That's entirely possible, I can't say it isn't I have no evidence against it.
I do have anecdotal evidence about people working from home though. I worked on a contract for a company remotely and had other coworkers working remotely, most of them were absolutely slacking. If a call was coming for a technical issue, I'd see them ignore the call frequently, and suddenly get responsive about 30 seconds after it rings, some of them have admitted to actually sleeping during work hours and just waking up to take t
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Then I guess they had jobs where they already slacked during work hours, just differently. Otherwise the lack of output would have been noticable.
Either that or management lacks reliable metrics to work with. So what is it, management not being able to track the people's work or management not being able to ensure everyone has a relevant amount of work at their hands?
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Either that or management lacks reliable metrics to work with. So what is it, management not being able to track the people's work or management not being able to ensure everyone has a relevant amount of work at their hands?
That's probably the biggest problem. If you're in the office it's easier to gauge the engagement level of a person, see the processes and the work they're during and infer a certain level of productivity.
There is a wide range of time for a task to be completed that can vary significantly on who does that task. You're paid hourly, you're expected to work for that time. If you were paid per task, the faster you get it done, the more money you get for your time. If you're paid hourly, doing something for 10 mi
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If you're in the office it's easier to gauge the engagement level of a person
It's not. Some (bad) managers think it's easier to gauge the engagement level of a person. It isn't. What you can see is whether someone appears to be busy. In Dilbert terms, this is where the Wallys of the world thrive. They can appear busy and like they're under constant stress, and the PHBs of the world will fall for it.
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The only caveat I'll give on that is that it can be easier to measure an individuals engagement and work ethic, and they still have to put effort to look busy, vs sitting at home watching a movie eating popcorn.
I will say, it's definitely harder to measure it when they work from home, I don't think you can deny that.
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I've enjoyed the conversations but I'm going to wrap up discussion points on this topic thought as there is an overall arch we can take away from this and not nit pick if a clever employee can still find a way to slack does = work from home okay. Just like because clever people can find ways to break DRM doesn't mean just get rid of it all together, average people will absolutely copy it more due to convenience and ease.
In summary: We have proven statistically on average for many roles that people are less
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The difference to DRM is that with DRM it doesn't matter whether you lose me as a customer because I reject your insistence to control when and how I may use your software for employing it or whether you lose the casual cracker for not using it.
With a job it does matter whether you can whip a slacker who won't amount to anything anyway into grinding his nose to the stone or whether you use one of your top level achievers because he can get better work conditions with the competition.
Re:My Coworkers are on Ice and Quaaludes (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, I know that you tried to make a snide comment, but in this economy, if you want to retain the best, you have to offer them what they want. You want me to work for you, you let me put my cadaver where I want to. Else I'm working for some other company.
They understand, and did the math. The value of having people in the office is greater than the delicate geniuses that can't be bothered to do so. If they could make more $ by allowing people to work from home, they'd do it. Source: I know people like money.
None of the best companies are embracing 100% work from home. Usually the best talent like to work for the best companies... because they pay the best and have the best perks.
I don't disagree though, if you're 1/2 decent you can certainly find a 100% WFH position somewhere. A lot of smaller companies won't want to shell out for your office space.
Re:My Coworkers are on Ice and Quaaludes (Score:5, Interesting)
They understand, and did the math. The value of having people in the office is greater than the delicate geniuses that can't be bothered to do so. If they could make more $ by allowing people to work from home, they'd do it. Source: I know people like money.
You have too much faith in corporate leadership; companies make irrational decisions all the time. From refusing to hire or provide service to racial minorities before the civil rights act to investing huge amounts of money in crytpo-based crap like NFTs and "the metaverse". Lots of studies show that total productivity stays the same or goes up when going from 40 hour work weeks to 32 hours (for knowledge-based and creative jobs), but very few companies are implementing such policies. I see no reason to believe that this push to return to the office is based on business data.
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They understand, and did the math.
LOL. I have been in many of these meetings with SVPs in HR, Operations, and IT at a large enterprise (25k+ employees). Admittedly I have little to no relationship with the C-Suite, but their direct reports are playing everything by ear. They are running more off biases than data.
The only strong data-driven reason they have for bringing people back to the office has nothing to do with productivity. It has to do with them not wanting to write-off too much corporate real estate that would bring down stock pric
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Companies don't make decisions, people do. Have you never heard of executives internally or investment agencies externally gutting profitable orgs for their own gain?
Sigh. And companies are made up of people that make decisions. I think you knew that though.
Unclear what gutting companies has to do with asking workers to come to the office. Anyway, what's your thinking here. Apple is making their workers return to the office in some grand scheme to gut the company?
After 2+ years of experimentation with WFH, not a single large company decided to embrace it. So every company is acting irrationally and not in the interest of profits, OR employee satisfactions? Not even ultr
Re: My Coworkers are on Ice and Quaaludes (Score:2)
My employer requests 2 days per week, but is okay with 1. Even thatâ(TM)s not overly enforced.
They largely look at how well one satisfies allocated KPIâ(TM)s.
If they adopted Googleâ(TM)s attitude, I would very much consider leaving. I find working from home incredibly convenient.
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You mean like about 90% of office positions?
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Call it whatever you want, I get paid well to produce it.
And janitor, while you're at it, maybe empty out my trash can?
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Pfft!
People like me pay people like you to empty our trash cans.
Keep trying Digital Dust Boi
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I suppose your work involves creating digital dust rather than any physical object or providing in-person services to the public?
Your comment seems to imply that this "digital dust" is somehow less valuable than physical object or in-person services. Market forces disagree with you strongly. Office work in on average a much larger value add than creating physical objects and in-person services.
You're correct (Score:2)
You need to find a different job then.
You may be a troll, but even a broken clock is right twice a day. Quite simply, this is a market equation. If your employer is wasting your time and someone else wants to hire you, then the market has done it's job beautifully. Quit your shit job and find one that suits your needs.
That's the beauty of competition. If Google wants to make missteps, there are many other tech employer that will happily hire their best engineers away from them.
There may be mass layoffs, but there's still a global sh
Re: My Coworkers are on Ice and Quaaludes (Score:2)
Outlook is a piece of crap.
Use Thunderbird or almost anything else.
Re: My Coworkers are on Another Continent. (Score:1)
Your employer should align teams with geography. There should be minimal day to day interaction with sites so remote.
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Your employer should align teams with geography. There should be minimal day to day interaction with sites so remote.
But I wanna work from this great place where I can do X and Y and Z (all being unrelated to work) while taking ZOOM con-calls and looking for a reliable Wi-Fi signal or 4G-5G LTE.
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Now we can argue about whether or not that should be case, (Personally, I'm firmly on the side of telling them to fuck off as long as the work gets done on time.), but the reality for most is they aren't allowed such an option.
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I'm not.
Get better management or settle for worse workers. Either is fine by me.
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If you can't only think otherwise but also explain why I need to come back to the office, please elaborate.
So far, nobody managed to present a single good argument for it. I can easily present a lot against for both, employer and employee.
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Well, the proponents of work in the office are now using threats and trying to ridicule and insult those that are against and try to reshape reality by lying, see the posting above yours.
Makes me think they have no credible arguments at all.
I do still suspect that outside of "management" most that are for a return to the office are the leechers that are not actually productive on reasonable levels themselves, but rely on stuff they take from coworkers. Work from home makes it pretty clear that they are a pr
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Well, the proponents of work in the office are now using threats and trying to ridicule and insult those that are against and try to reshape reality by lying, see the posting above yours.
Didn't work on me on the playground, it sure as hell don't work on me in reality either.
Makes me think they have no credible arguments at all.
I kinda get the same feeling, the more I ask and the more I fail to get an answer, the more I start to think this might just be the case.
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Well, the proponents of work in the office are now using threats and trying to ridicule and insult those that are against and try to reshape reality by lying, see the posting above yours.
Didn't work on me on the playground, it sure as hell don't work on me in reality either.
Hahhaha, same here. But it is telling about their mind-set.
Makes me think they have no credible arguments at all.
I kinda get the same feeling, the more I ask and the more I fail to get an answer, the more I start to think this might just be the case.
Indeed.
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In my case, getting in a room with the other engineers is invaluable and I used to get on a plane twice a year to do that.
But since covid, someone got so used to not paying for flights that they decided it was unnecessary.
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It's pretty rare that I ever have the boss that want's to put the effort into micromanaging unless I have given them some cause to do so.
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Don't you look forward to meeting your eventual $10/hr replacements in Mumbai?
+1 Funny...if I had Mod points
Hybrid Approach (Score:1)
"...our hybrid approach" means "Our inabiliity to please anyone."
Sorry, Google, you just Musk'd yourself into the "If you don't come in to the office we'll downgrade your employment review" group.
Excuse it any way you like. The lawsuits will come. You know it. You ran the numbers. Go do more evil.
The benefits you only notice when they are gone... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Hi,
I'm a corporate shill publicly shaming others with joy of work BS.
Now get back to the mines,
ChatGPT
Re:The benefits you only notice when they are gone (Score:5, Insightful)
It's lovely for you because you're an extrovert.
I'm not.
Everything you list there as a "job perk" sounds like torture to me. Essentially, my pay would have to go up CONSIDERABLY to put up with and endure the stuff you "enjoy".
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It's lovely for you because you're an extrovert.
I'm not.
Everything you list there as a "job perk" sounds like torture to me. Essentially, my pay would have to go up CONSIDERABLY to put up with and endure the stuff you "enjoy".
By far my biggest problem in retirement is that I tie myself up working on kinda useless projects at home as an excuse to not get out and see real people. I _do_ get out, but it's this big involved ritual and I seriously worry I'm losing the battle over time.
I worked remote for all sorts of tech companies in the 90's, and it was awesome. In 1999 I decided to get a "real job" primarily because I wanted to have lunch with people without having to work so damned hard at it. It totally worked out for me. I
Re:The benefits you only notice when they are gone (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a problem for people who have little social interaction outside of work, and it's caused largely by working patterns...
You get up, get ready for work and then endure a long commute to work.. After work, you endure a long commute back and by the time you reach home you barely have enough energy to eat something or lounge infront of the tv for a while before going to bed. You get caught in a pattern like this and you end up with your only social interaction with anyone being work.
This is actually worse for introverts, because of their nature they are less likely to seek out voluntary social interaction, so they only get the forced social interaction in the workplace because they had no choice.
If you work from home, you have more free time and you have the opportunity to meet people in your local area. Go to the local bars/restaurants, join some local activities/clubs, even attend a religious service it you want.
Lockdowns didn't help with this, because although you were at home and had plenty of free time you still couldn't engage in any of these social activities.
Re:The benefits you only notice when they are gone (Score:4, Insightful)
Label it whatever you want but a lot of us HIGHLY resent being forced to commute 2-3 hours round trip to sit in an open office where you barely get a shelf that masquerades as a desk subjected to all the noise and distraction of being packed in so closely to a bunch of chatterboxes on speakerphone meetings, not to mention people constantly walking up to you interrupting what you are trying to do because they think their emergency is somehow your problem, only to be doing a job that is effectively remote anyway since there's exactly nothing that you are doing in your workday that requires you to be in that stupid office. After my job got classed as 100% remote I saved thousands in fuel, vehicle maintenance, and meals, recovered 10+ hours I had been wasting on commuting each week, and have the ability to deal with chores around the house like dishes and laundry while still being more productive. Plus I can take a break to walk my dog or just go outside into the fresh air of the woods behind my house rather than deal with the pollution and human garbage of the inner-city office.
You do you but FFS if someone was able to do their job from anywhere and you FORCE them to commute to an office you are a seriously toxic employer.
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I never thought it would be me that said those words, but: Get a life. Or rather, get a life outside of work.
Being an introvert and enjoying not having to interact with office people doesn't mean I hate people. Well, for the most part, I do, but not all of them. I do have friends. A select number of people whose presence I can endure, even enjoy (at times and in very small doses). But, and that is the key: I, and only I, get to choose which people those are.
That's not the case with work. At work, you're thr
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I guess we found the extrovert.
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Tomeeeeto, tomaaato...
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I discovered that no matter how much I worked, nobody really had a clue what I did. Sure, if the work wasn't done they may notice, but when it was done it was just the oil keeping the machine moving. Only visible to the parts I was directly in contact with.
This has been my experience working in IT, period - even back when I was in the office 100% of the time, meeting people and "synergizing" and "having dynamic hallway conversations" and whatever other buzzword you want to throw in there. It has nothing to do with being in person or remote.
IT workers are simply looked at differently than everyone else. The non-IT folk really have no grasp of how things happen and no concept of the time it takes to do many IT tasks. They just expect you're going to keep it all
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You got that right. Those 'magical hallway conversations' usually meant "Here's another task to add to your list, and by the way it's at the top of your list now."
Then I'd add that to all the other "Priority 1" tasks and I'd get to sort out which one was urgentest.
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Hi Drew. There is a literary convention called a paragraph. There is a reason it was created. I will leave it to you to figure out what that reason could possibly be.
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This... We need a rethink of the whole 9-5 office working idea, and covid just showed how practical it was.
There's so much talk about saving the environment these days, and yet there is so much resistance to doing the obvious thing which was shown to work during covid - cut out unnecessary travel.
If you have every job that can be done from home, done from home you already cut down unnecessary journeys massively. Then for work which can't be done remotely, stagger working hours and take steps to get the empl
Our productivity is through the roof (Score:4, Interesting)
and we're 100% remote and hybrid. Some people are going to the office once a week, but most people in my team don't bother. We just get more shit done when we aren't being constantly disturbed by random crap and 'hallway magic'. Every team is different, and some may work better in person, but assuming they will all work better in person is a bit presumptuous, perhaps even arrogant.
Oh well, Google can make all the dumb top-down decisions it wants. It's their company to run how they like.
Really it just makes me not want to consider working there when their talent hunters are slinging their siren songs into my inbox.
I hope it works out for them. They had a nice search engine.
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Productivity overall in the US went through the roof when we all starting working from home. Nonfarm labor productivity went up about 6% almost immediately. That is the same growth we had seen from 2014 - 2020, but this time in just a few months. Productivity stayed high for two years, but started dropping in early 2022.
"Coincidentally" that is when companies started cracking down on WFH. Today nonfarm labor productivity sits right where the trendline would have estimated it at before Covid hit, so apparent
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I hate to be the "correlation is not causation guy", but it could be something else about social distancing that improved productivity. I know stopped going to parties and bars as well as working from home.
That is true that we need to be careful about correlation, but productivity stayed high for a year after people stopped practicing social distancing in significant numbers. It wasn't until we started being pulled back to work that it started to drop. I don't think it is just working in the office which dropped productivity, but also workers being disengaged after their wishes were ignored by their employers. I personally think that is a much bigger driver of dropping productivity than the office itself bein
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Exactly this.. Having a social event where there's no work pressure is a much better way to get to know people.
This is obviously a map/reduce job (Score:3)
Get it?
Jumped the Shark (Score:5, Insightful)
Old joke about a guy looking for keys under a street light. Cop comes over and helps. After a while, cop says "Where where you when you lost them?" guy points to a dark area 40 ft away and says "No way I could see them there, but at least there is a chance I could here."
Two ways a company can reward employees - those that do well on things they can easily measure (i.e. attendance) and those that actually help the company make a profit even if it is not obvious.
When you start rewarding people for that which can be measured easily rather than actually contributing, people spend less time contributing and more time getting a good measure.
Management et. al. want you to attend meetings because it helps THEM look good and possibly contribute to the company. It almost never helps the attendees contribute to the company more than if the management talked with the employees at the employees convenience.
Management does not have to make a company worse, but when they do not want to work as hard as you do, they become the joke that everyone makes fun of.
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Two ways a company can reward employees - those that do well on things they can easily measure (i.e. attendance) and those that actually help the company make a profit even if it is not obvious.
When you start rewarding people for that which can be measured easily rather than actually contributing, people spend less time contributing and more time getting a good measure.
Your view is over simplistic. Rewarding performance alone rather than adherence or adoption of company policy is a great way to promote narcissist and toxic arseholes who think they were gods gift to the keyboard and that every key stroke is programming gold. There's actual value for a company in having employees that not only perform well, but also play along with overall management strategies.
I had on my performance review the amount of holidays I took as people not taking holidays was a problem at our wo
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You gave some interesting points I did not think of, but are not aware of some of my points.
I do agree that I simplified things a lot and that rule breaking toxic employees are not good for the company. But I find that those people are a) more likely to be management and b) more likely to attend meetings than not. The truly hard working people tend to be both liked and reluctant to waste time at a meeting. Lets be honest, most meetings in an American company would be better at half the size or a red flagg
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Effective meetings are better done in-person, yes, no question.
However, the problem is most meetings are ineffective. Most people can't remember the last time they were in a meeting where their input was actually required or they were needed enough to be in attendance, rather than in a meeting just to take up space.
The fact is, most people know those meetings well
Re: Jumped the Shark (Score:2)
Believe what you're describing is called Goodhart's law.
And yes it is correct.
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Many of the products we unveiled at I/O and Google Marketing Live last month were conceived, developed and built by teams whose members ate ketchup at least once a week.
So now your ketchup consumption will be monitored. Three tablespoons a week or your performance review suffers.
Time to brush up the resume (Score:2)
Sorry, but the times when I put up with that kind of bullshit have been over at least for a decade now. I don't give a flying fuck about your "performance review". If you want to do busywork like that, you should have become an elementary teacher.
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Don't be sorry though, I too have stopped putting up with bullshitty people who can't seem to meet you at reality. It's always a script or vernacular. I know pretty quickly if someone I'm dealing with isn't going to level with me. Power and control games. I'm out. Either that or it's a test to see if you'll go along to get along, which I never. And I say it. One thing you will get out me is an honest opinion.
Seriously, review threats? Oh no, wh
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And if you're not nice, Santa isn't gonna bring you a gift.
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Could anyone join in? I don't have the heart to tell him Santa ain't real.
Google pays more lipservice to the green cause (Score:2)
Traffic already as bad in the Silicon Valley as it was pre pandemi
Of course they will (Score:2)
Are they also going to include (Score:2)
Pass laws mandating WFH already. For anyone that needs to go into an office it means a lot less traffic and for the rest it means no traffic and for everyone it means cleaner air and cheaper gasoline.
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Exactly this, better for everyone unless you happen to own a bunch of empty office buildings.
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You don't really expect my pity for your failed investments, do you?
PIP PIP Hooray! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Google looking to reduce headcount without paying severance. The golden age of the FAANGs is drawing to a close. Probably be a while before the replacements show up.
When people Willfully Unemploy Themselves that is not the fault of the Corp, so no severance is due.
Sooner or later the my way or the highway approach by both employer and employee will do Fed Chairman Jerome Powell's job for him...increase unemployment levels and slow the hot economy.
Merit (Score:2)
Attrition drive (Score:4, Insightful)
This is plainly a veiled layoff, a drive to push people to leave their job themselves, saving Google severance pay and bad PR.
When a company drives hiring & firing based on anything other than merit, its downfall won't be far behind.
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Saves money and reputation in the short term, but long term all the best people will leave because they can get another job easily and you'll be left with the worst.
Work as kindergarten classroom (Score:2)
Claiming a job at Google is basically kindergarten isn't something new, but now that they're taking attendance it's one step closer to being true.
Bullshit (Score:2)
"but there's no question that working together in the same room makes a positive difference"
That is bullshit, and the pandemic proved it.
Codifying flexible working is the only answer (Score:2)
There's no answer to this nonsense except to codify the right to flexible working in law.
This bunch are in the midst of an emotional panic, as they see remote working as a 'loss of control'. They will not listen to reason or evidence on productivity. It's a feeling for them. And once other companies start doing it, they don't want to be outliers.
This same lot would roll back holiday, sick leave, 8hour days, the weekend and the minimum wage if they could, and if the law didn't prevent them from doing so. Thi
Adult daycare (Score:2)
high school redux (Score:2)
Google should have thought about this before hiring all those children. Now it has to grade them on attendance. Pretty soon, we will have demands that the bathrooms provide free diapers.
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The important question is, do they plan to hand out participation, sorry, attendance trophies?
The two types of managers (Score:2)
* Judge performance based on input - hours in the office, etc.
* Judge performance based on output - projects completed, bugs fixed, etc.
Anyone can be an input-based manager, because the criteria are simple and non-techincal.
You have to have a certain minimum technical understanding of the work to be an output-based manager.
Start-ups and small organizations tend to be output-based, because of the immediate feedback from early customers.
As organizations grow, they tend to become more input-based, mostly becau
Magical hallway conversations? (Score:2)
So the big employer wants you to have magical, serendipitous "hallway conversations", but in the meantime they are using spyware to make sure you don't goof off, take unscheduled breaks, or otherwise stray from your mouse/keyboard for more than 10 seconds. Got it.
Look, I get the concept of "magical hallway conversations". It's a nice idea. But it's based upon a fantasy of a creative, collegial workplace (or "campus") where everyone is working on related projects and sparking ideas off each other. How ma
And? (Score:2)
"Many of the products we unveiled at I/O and Google Marketing Live last month were conceived, developed and built by teams working side by side."
That's nice. 100% of those projects will be shitcanned for not having enough users in 18 months anyway. So what's the point of coming in to the office again?
Woke, meaning "not being an asshole?" (Score:3, Insightful)
Eating a well-balanced free lunch improves mental health just like the seminars that you need to attend about all kind of woke topics like the acceptance of transgender queer database engineers in your team.
You're coming out against accepting coworker's personal choices? Your female coworker has a dick and this is a problem for you? Simple call her by her preferred pronouns and get on with your day. No one is demanding you suck her off. If she's any good at her job, send her my way, we need more qualified database engineers. There's a MASSIVE shortage of SQL skills among developers today.
It's not "woke" to accept coworkers who do things differently than you in their free time...it's just "not being an
Re: Woke, meaning "not being an asshole?" (Score:2)
Re: Woke, meaning "not being an asshole?" (Score:2)
You won't mind if I refer to you as "dickhead" then, will you? It's what I perceive, and easier than making an effort to get your name right.
Very little is asked of you. (Score:2)
Agreed - but don't expect me to use a pronoun other than what I perceive someones gender to be unless they I work with them regularly.
Honestly, that's reasonable. It's inappropriate to talk about your sex life at work and no one is asking you to "like" what they do, just show basic professional courtesy. Like I said, I have coworkers from countries with horrific religious and social views...we simply don't talk about it and go on with our day...make small talk about the weather or office coworkers than discussing their opinions on "what a good wife does."
Also, don't preach about your transgender queer status -- I don't discuss my sexual preferences or sex life with you and ask that you do the same.
The devil is in the details there. Someone shouldn't have to hide that they have a
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...approach, where they say come in or be fired.
+1 Insightful...if I had Mod points.
And that could be the next step taken by the Big Corps...but don't expect them to issue such an edict Corp-wide at same time. It might phase-in like the Netflix crack down on password sharing did.
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Fire me.
I dare you.
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The oligarchs want people fat, tired, unhappy, depressed, and living on a cycle of insurmountable debt.
Ok, I'll be willing to be all of that, can I now please avoid commuting to work?
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Problem is, that will get them the wrong people to leave.
Who quits? People can can easily get another job. Who can get another job? People who have a very high in demand skill set.
Who stays? People who can't get another job easily. Who can't get another job? People who are useless.