Googlers will be working from home until September 2021, says Sundar Pichai, followed by 'flexible' work weeks

Google will allow the majority of its staffers to work from home until September 2021, and the search giant will experiment with a hybrid model that combines office-based and remote working after that. This approach will involve at least three days spent at the office, with employees able to choose to work from home for the …

[Dinanziame]

Google is pretty famous for its great in-office perks such as free food, fitness, massage and the like. I bet the employees would be pissed off if they got told all those benefits are coming to an end...

Personally, I think it's great to be able to walk to people's desk and chat with them rather than using slack or VC. I can't imagine preferring to work from home. Then again, I have a short commute, so I don't spend half of my life in traffic.

[RyokuMas]

Got to agree; the current, ongoing work-from home situation and the resulting lack of work/life separation and general atmosphere of being around like-minded professionals has caused my insomnia to flare to the point where I'm not averaging 4-5 hours sleep per night. Needless to say, this is wrecking havock on my ability to develop software!

I was all for lockdown at the start - we needed something to allow us to get a handle on the situation and figure out exactly what we are dealing with. But now we need to look at the long-term effects: mental health issues - up. Domestic abuse - up. Suicide - up. It's time to relax the regulations. Sure, we should still be careful: masks, track-and-trace, self isolation after contact, etc., but it's now time to start weighing up the damage this ongoing grind is causing... how much of the NHS's funding over the next decade is going to be used dealing with people who have developed anxiety or depression due to the COVID response?

I for one am now at the point where I'd be happy to pay the fine in order to meet up with my best mate.

[TheMeerkat]

Nobody will moose a fine if you just meet with a friend.

Unfortunately you can’t do it in a pub though..,

[JonSaul]

I concur. When my work was open for all the cafeteria was not free, but probably was sponsored to some extent. We did have some free or discounted caffeinated beverages, which I think was mostly for coders though I enjoyed the opportunity.

[Anonymous Coward]

My own opinion is that is does not work long term.

I have been on both sides of the fence, I used to work at Sun Microsystems in the naughties and we started working from home more and more. What I found is over time creativity of the groups I worked with dropped, when people were at home they just delivered on what they had in front of them but the lack of chewing the fat with the office people around them we lost the beat of the business and clients. Working from home my hours increased and the day blurred into one.

I used to want to go int the office (which meant commuting into London) as the open planned offices and seating meant one day you might be sitting next to OS guru, next days sales people and then the odd director. You could pickup tips/ideas and bounce things off so many different types of people, all my best learning was then down the pub after.

Fast forward and now I run my own company, we have offices and have people on flexi working (apart from lockdown when we were closed). We found people are more productive doing the direct tasks but again what is missed is the transfer of knowledge between senior people and juniors, when a junior is also at home they do not see or pickup on the pearls of wisdom and experience. Then after 6 months these juniors then think they can do the same job as their seniors.. they do not see the senior using their skills gain over time to handle a difficult customer or situations. I have noticed the company has lost its creativity as ideas are not getting discussed or people getting excited around an office desk or wipe board. Part of being an employee in a business is to help build a culture for everyone to want to be a part of.

If I was in my 20's I would want to look for work for a company that had offices I could visit when I wanted, the future Google method makes more sense, 100% working from home.. no thanks, not for me, seeing people is key to learning.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pros and Cons

Definitely there are some distinct things we've all learnt from enforced remote working.

1) Technically, it works for most IT people. Of course it does, the IT department knew that years ago.

2) Some people are happy they don't have to share a space with some miserable cnut (every office has one or more)

3) Some people just hate people and being forced to go near them (seems in IT there is a lot of them, must be something in the water cooler)

4) The board love it - seeing all of those dollar bill signs flash before their eyes when they think of all of the facilities they can close

5) Commuting or even wearing outdoor clothes is over. Nobody really loves either of those do they? Money saved is a lot.

6) Knowledge sharing is seriously dented. Anyone who worked in a distributed team knew this already.

7) The number of meetings has skyrocketed, and still the knowledge sharing is poor. Zoom/Teams doesn't begin to bridge the gap.

8) The social people hate it. Yeah, even IT has some.

9) The mental cost of being sat in your house all day everyday is bad. The physical one even worse.

10) a lot of people don't have suitable working conditions at home. Particularly effects younger people.

Don't get me wrong, I understand it was needed for COVID, I just hate the idea that this is permanent going forward.

I'd love to get back to regular days at an office location but maybe we can find a compromise where we don't care about suits and ties any more, 9am starts and spend the together time more focused on collaboration, with the balance at home. There is no reason why not.