back to article Google HR hounds threaten 'next steps' for slackers not coming in 3 days a week

Google will police rules about hybrid work more tightly by proposing to include office time in performance reviews, with HR threatening to consider "next steps" should employees not adhere to the updated policy. Much of the workforce were asked to come into the office three days a week from spring last year, and in a memo to …

  1. JavaJester
    FAIL

    Showing your North Eastern Employees How Little You Care

    With the North East of the United States under air quality advisories for people to stay indoors, it's a bad look for a company to give its employees a diktat to come into the office. I can't think of a better way I could convey to my employees that I don't give a damn about them than demand they drive through health damaging air because I want them to be in the office. Tracking badge usage to enforce this? Talk about being stuck in the 20th century. The sooner these dinosaur managers retire, the better.

    1. doublelayer Silver badge

      Re: Showing your North Eastern Employees How Little You Care

      It's almost as if you didn't read this part of the article:

      As for the policy, requests to stay at home to work are now deemed exceptions. That doesn't count for this week, though. The wildfires in Canada and the subsequent bad air policy on the East Coast of the US mean that Googlers are advised to stay at home.

      You may object to the policy as a whole, but your particular objection appears to be based on assuming something that is the opposite of reality.

      1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        Re: Showing your North Eastern Employees How Little You Care

        Apparently it's a popular fantasy, though, judging by OP's upvotes.

        Which seems appropriate, since the story is about Google subscribing to the popular "we're better in the office" fantasy.

  2. spireite Silver badge
    Mushroom

    Still trying.

    Horse has bolted, the genie has escaped

    Ergo, it's not gonna happen.

    My ex company has haemorraged its entire permanent tech staff by forcing a 5 day in office rule, now populated by contractors who

    1. Don't care

    2. Get paid for mediocre results

    And the company suffers

    .. yet the company claims they believe that in office is better for collaboration.

    That'll be why each office worker uses Teams even when they are all in the office.

    This is a mandate of companies that overpaid and over expanded with associated overpriced office space... Nothing more

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Still trying.

      Google’s grossly over engineered, Grossly wasteful new central London office is a great example of this.

      https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2022/jul/01/behold-londons-landscraper-googles-new-uk-hq-as-long-as-the-shard-is-tall

      Some admin sheds in Slough, Cardiff, Dundee, Middlesborough, Carlisle, Belfast, Coventry would do.

      Keep smoking the London skunk!!!

      1. keithpeter Silver badge
        Windows

        Re: Still trying.

        Should any managing directors be reading this, may I point out that Birmingham has a good supply of sheds as well.

        Available in a range of sizes, rental arrangements, locations, and building types (early Victorian brick built canalside to 2020s steel clad sheds).

        1. 43300 Silver badge

          Re: Still trying.

          Is your line of business renting out sheds in Birmingham?!

          1. keithpeter Silver badge
            Windows

            Re: Still trying.

            @43300

            Nope, but Andy Street does, indirectly, pay my wages.

            (teacher in Adult education, my students need good well-paying jobs locally, a few nice big FAANG type office complexes would actually create significant employment)

            1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

              Re: Still trying.

              And in general it'd be nice to see deep-pocketed corporations making use of older but still serviceable commercial real estate and spreading the high-tech jobs around. That would also reduce the concentration of home price inflation.

  3. TimMaher Silver badge
    Coat

    Coming together in person.

    Barbarella anyone?

    1. Arthur the cat Silver badge

      Re: Coming together in person.

      I was thinking more of actress and bishop jokes.

    2. Nifty

      Re: Coming together in person.

      Well, r.e. "There's just no substitute for coming together in person", maybe allowing sex on the boardroom table might finally pursuade the workers to visit the office occasionally.

      1. Fazal Majid

        Re: Coming together in person.

        Boardroom tables are hard and it’s not as pleasant an experience as you’d think, beyond the transgressive thrills.

        1. that one in the corner Silver badge

          Re: Coming together in person.

          Sounds like the voice of experience.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The era of perks as bribes is over

    People don’t care about a free lunch if they have to endure an unnecessarily long commute or inflated living costs. If the carrot doesn’t work, the stick won’t either. Folks will just migrate to less fancy jobs with lower overheads for an easier life, even if the pay is slightly lower.

    People also don’t believe in the lie of working hard for a nice retirement, so stock options don’t carry the same favour they used to either, folks live long enough to know that their quality of health will fail them long before they can enjoy the rewards…

  5. skeptical i
    Thumb Down

    if it ain't broke, don't "fix" it

    Employees are adults, and if they think they can do better work at the office they will do so. (I for one might prefer a change of scenery on occasion to prod some "new" thinking, but that's solely my opinion.) Do companies really think that forcing commutes and office-babble-noise in order for employees to do the same thing at the office that one can do at home is going to raise morale?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: if it ain't broke, don't "fix" it

      Yeah right. That explains why productivity has fallen off a cliff due to "W"FH.

      1. NeilPost

        Re: if it ain't broke, don't "fix" it

        … well Except it hasn’t.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: if it ain't broke, don't "fix" it

          Tried to call HMRC lately?

          1. Robin

            Re: if it ain't broke, don't "fix" it

            One company can't manage remote workers properly, therefore the concept doesn't work anywhere? Understood.

          2. Citizen of Nowhere

            Re: if it ain't broke, don't "fix" it

            Try googling "non sequitur" -- you can do it from the office, or remotely, as you prefer.

          3. monty75

            Re: if it ain't broke, don't "fix" it

            HMRC have always been crap. Nothing to do with WFH.

            1. Arthur the cat Silver badge

              Re: if it ain't broke, don't "fix" it

              HMRC have always been crap.

              To be fair, if you can find the right person they're remarkably helpful. It's just that finding the right person makes Linvingstone's search for the source of the Nile look like a Sunday walk in the park.

              1. RegGuy1

                Re: if it ain't broke, don't "fix" it

                I take it you're talking about BT. You can go through 30 Indian bods, only to find the guy in Newcastle who has worked there for forty years and knows the answer to everything, such as which internal tool to use to solve your problem. Or is that just my experience? :-)

                1. Arthur the cat Silver badge

                  Re: if it ain't broke, don't "fix" it

                  I take it you're talking about BT.

                  I've had exactly the same thing with Zen. Usually a good ISP, but their front line know four fifths of fuck all about IPv6 or configuring non-Zen supplied routers(*). Any answers you get about either cover a spectrum from gormless through clueless to meaningless. Insist on speaking to one of the IPv6 team though, and after you've had a "are you sure, they're a bit scary" response you'll end up talking to a really helpful bod who'll answer your questions perfectly with no fuss in very little time. Sadly Zen don't support the shibboleet protocol.

                  (*) I run OPNsense on a Chinese industrial PC with 6 Intel ethernet interfaces.

          4. chris street

            Re: if it ain't broke, don't "fix" it

            I have - needed a query about my current P60 sorting.

            Took me four minutes to get through and then about ten minutes sorting the issue.

          5. AndrueC Silver badge
            Meh

            Re: if it ain't broke, don't "fix" it

            It was difficult to get through to HMRC twenty years ago. It's always been difficult.

          6. Ashto5

            Re: if it ain't broke, don't "fix" it

            HMRC as an example is not a good look

            HMRC has always been a nightmare to call like forever

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: That explains why productivity has fallen off a cliff due to "W"FH.

        That's BS. In fact, there is tons of evidence that WFH has, in fact, increased productivity.

        The reason for the current "back to the office" initiatives isn't worker performance (or the often cited nonsense of "office culture"), it's simply down to the company being held hostage to long-term leases of real estate property from which there is no easy escape, and to make the expenditure tax deductible the company has to show that the office is used.

        In reality, for desk jobs which can be done anywhere, the only people that really need to be back in the office are the under-performers who need someone to micromanage them, which is difficult to do remotely. They are the ones that actually do benefit from being in the office, until the company realizes that they are still mostly just a drain on resources and should really be terminated.

        1. Vometia has insomnia. Again.

          Re: That explains why productivity has fallen off a cliff due to "W"FH.

          That's BS. In fact, there is tons of evidence that WFH has, in fact, increased productivity.

          That was my experience of WFH in the '90s; and I was told it wasn't exactly a recent discovery then either, it was well known that tech employees like me were typically a lot more productive and the problem was the risk of over-work. But every company I've worked for since, even those who promised they'd give it "serious consideration" in the interview, would immediately renege on the offer using the same tired old arguments we're still seeing today. And that resistance always comes from the same old middle-manager types, the ones I've tried to figure out exactly what it is they do other than micromanaging and making everyone's life harder, and decades later I still have no idea.

          1. RegGuy1

            Re: That explains why productivity has fallen off a cliff due to "W"FH.

            But, but... if the middle managers need information about you to manage you, how can they do that when they can't see you?

            I mean, if it's just data from some system that they use, why can't a machine just do their job?

            1. Vometia has insomnia. Again.

              Re: That explains why productivity has fallen off a cliff due to "W"FH.

              I always questioned why I needed to do timesheets, especially in such detail, considering I always had some manager breathing down my neck. If they had no idea what I was doing, what use were they? And if they had no idea what I was doing when we were both in the office, how would it make a difference if I was working from home? The answer is it didn't, except for the benefits of not being interrupted and micromanaged. Another advantage of not being seen was no requirement to wear such uncomfortable clothes and shoes that the workplace stipulated back then, though once my WFH days ended and I was back in the office I just started wearing whatever I felt like anyway.

              1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

                Re: That explains why productivity has fallen off a cliff due to "W"FH.

                In some jurisdictions timesheets are useful for corporate-tax purposes. They're not necessarily just an invention of management.

                Not saying that should make you love them or anything, just that the organization may have financial incentive to make employees fill them out. (Accurately or not.)

                1. Vometia has insomnia. Again.

                  Re: That explains why productivity has fallen off a cliff due to "W"FH.

                  This was in the UK, though it was DEC and their horrid SAMS timesheet system was a company-wide thing I think. Even where it is necessary, my opinion is that it's really a managerial task to keep track of what their staff are doing...

        2. bo111

          Re: That explains why productivity has fallen off a cliff due to "W"FH.

          >> the only people that really need to be back in the office are the under-performers

          This. Or those not capable to self-organize and choose what to do. So unfortunately everyone has to attend meetings especially organized to motivate them. Companies can actually be more productive letting those low performers do nothing, but not disturbing the high performers.

        3. Joseba4242

          Re: That explains why productivity has fallen off a cliff due to "W"FH.

          It depends on the type of work. If there is a clearly described piece of work, then WFH can be very productive.

          The moment you need to go beyond and figure it out in the context of a complex company it breaks down. Serendipity is important.

          Innovation works much better if people are actually sitting together.

          Bringing new people is hard if they can't look over the shoulders and ask quick questions.

          I'm seeing it every day that there is a strong correlation between doing WFH almost exclusively and working in a transactional manner and being stuck in your ways.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: That explains why productivity has fallen off a cliff due to "W"FH.

            >> It depends on the type of work. If there is a clearly described piece of work, then WFH can be very productive. The moment you need to go beyond and figure it out in the context of a complex company it breaks down. Serendipity is important.

            And yet during the pandemics (and even long before then) people have done exactly that, managing complex issues involving co-workers all around the globe.And not only has productivity not broken down, it has actually increased. In fact, whole industries rely on interaction with co-workers located on different sites or different countries.

            >> Innovation works much better if people are actually sitting together.

            That's nonsense. There is literally *zero* evidence that co-seating benefits innovation. Even less so in typical open plan offices where your direct neighbors works on something completely different than you are, which is common.

            Communication certainly can foster innovation, but only if it's done right, and just sitting next to each other isn't a guarantee that this is the case. In fact, most innovation happens across different places, for example in research (which is often distributed not just between facilities but also countries).

            >> Bringing new people is hard if they can't look over the shoulders and ask quick questions.

            The argument for new starters to spend the first week in-office can certainly be made, but even here it's not clear cut. A graduate fresh from university benefits a lot more from watching others and asking questions than an experienced professional who's merely changing employers and for whom spending time in the office to watch their new colleagues doing stuff he knows how to do is nothing more than a waste of time.

            >> I'm seeing it every day that there is a strong correlation between doing WFH almost exclusively and working in a transactional manner and being stuck in your ways.

            If that's so then that's very likely because at least one of two reasons:

            1. you work with under-performers who need someone to micromanage them so they produce at least some valuable output, and while I agree that these employees are better suited for in-office work, they should really be put on a PEP and if they don't improve they should be sacked.

            2. your workplace has inept management who has no idea how to structure remote work processes and metrics, and while bringing people back to the office somewhat compensates for leadership incompetence it doesn't make it go away.

            Sadly, if #2 applies and you're any good in your job then the only way to resolve this is a change of employer.

          2. that one in the corner Silver badge

            Just because it worked out ok for Jo Grant...

            > Serendipity is important.

            I *really* hope that your work isn't trying to leverage serendipity!

            It doesn't seem like a viable business plan to hope that someone will have a happy accident just in time to solve the problem:, like Jo spilling those mushrooms onto the giant maggots!

            And I certainly don't see how being in the office rather than at home improves upon your having unexpected good luck (unless you are working from the low base level that being in the office is bad luck and any accident is at least going to give the chance for schadenfreude).

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Yeah right. That explains why productivity has fallen off a cliff due to "W"FH.

        Yeah right, show me the metrics mother fucker.

        When you have no logical arguments then invent some facts and declare them with enough confidence and people will believe you.

        There is no data that says productivity is down. Link me up if you can find some.

        The lack of data shows they know that it shows WFH is more productive.

        1. chris street

          Re: Yeah right. That explains why productivity has fallen off a cliff due to "W"FH.

          And wheres your proof other than a bold faced assertion that it's fallen off a cliff?

    2. gv

      Re: if it ain't broke, don't "fix" it

      Exactly: two-hour daily commute into some air-conditioned nightmare to spend the day on Zoom calls with people in Europe, the US and India.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: if it ain't broke, don't "fix" it

        Be grateful. Think of the benefits; it saves *your* Internet, it stops it wearing out.

    3. M.V. Lipvig Silver badge

      Re: if it ain't broke, don't "fix" it

      "Do companies really think that forcing commutes and office-babble-noise in order for employees to do the same thing at the office that one can do at home is going to raise morale?x

      No, but directors heavily invested in commercial properties know it will raise morale - THEIR personal morale.

      1. Antron Argaiv Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        Re: if it ain't broke, don't "fix" it

        Ah, don't forget the open plan office and hot desking. Two "innovations" that pretty much guarantee my absence from any office that has them.

  6. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge

    The free lunch is nice, but...

    Spend your entire income competing for housing next to a Google office or say "goodbye" with your remote work savings? With the tech industry being so focused on short-term profits, getting fired when you have money sounds like a better bet than being laid off when you're broke.

    Companies aren't getting good human interaction and productivity because people are bad at managing time spent in meetings.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    ""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.""

    C'mon then, show us the data. Where is it? You being lonely is not a crisis.

    1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      "there's no question that working together in the same room makes a positive difference" means "DO NOT QUESTION IT".

      It's the sign of religious doctrine, which is not surprising coming from the head of HR. People are notoriously variable and Taylorist scientific management breaks down quickly when those people aren't largely-fungible manual-laboring bodies. So HR at these big tech corporations can either be an art of acknowledging all of that difference and trying to find flexible systems for balancing corporate and human requirements; or it can be fierce adherence to an ideology with no acknowledgement of empirical data.

      I think we know which is the case at Google, and many other tech firms. I'm not even convinced by the "middle management panic" explanation; I think it's almost entirely ideological.That's why we see these sweeping claims from the C-suite.

  8. Spanners
    Facepalm

    Interesting

    So another employer has now decided that populating that fancy head office is more important than getting the most work possible out of their staff.

    If people WFH, they use their own facilities, electricity, heating/cooling, water etc. They don't expect coffee machines and, in Googland, free food, masseurs and yoga classes etc. They do however work better and longer.

    The only excuse for calling them back is that prestige offices really are shown for the white elephants we knew they were!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Interesting

      How does bringing in/up new talent figure into this utopian WFH dream you're weaving?

      1. Spanners
        Facepalm

        Re: Interesting

        That would be a better excuse. However, that is not the usual "reason" given.

        It's not so much a dream as an observation that a long-standing prediction seems to have turned out true.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: How does bringing in/up new talent figure into this utopian WFH dream you're weaving?

        Why posting AC? Was the handle "ManagementDinosaur" taken?

      3. chris street

        Re: Interesting

        I've been onboarding new people for the last year or more, all entirely remotely. We don't have problems - then again we are not stuck in the management dark ages either.

        1. Screepy

          Re: Interesting

          "I've been onboarding new people for the last year or more, all entirely remotely. We don't have problems - then again we are not stuck in the management dark ages either."

          Precisely this.

          Onboarding remotely may be different but it's not necessarily more difficult or worse.

          If your onboarding processes are still stuck on the ark with Noah then of course you'll struggle.

    2. mIVQU#~(p,

      Re: Interesting

      Don’t forget, a functioning, clean toilet.

      1. Vometia has insomnia. Again.

        Re: Interesting

        I'm reminded of some of the lads I was at school with many years ago who turned up one day with a bag containing their collection they were so proud to show the teacher: it was full of flush pedals they'd collected from numerous trains.

        Girls never did that sort of thing of course. Well, not flush pedals, anyway.

  9. Someone Else Silver badge

    Hey Google!

    Love to see how you intend to enforce this, and what "next steps" you would take to bring a recalcitrant Vint Cerf to heel come into the office.

    Oh, of course. He will be "an exception"....

    1. Woodnag

      Re: Hey Google!

      He's only an exception if it's in his contract. If it isn't, difficult to see how others can be punished for the same WFH unless it can be shown that productivity is affected.

      1. Someone Else Silver badge

        Re: Hey Google!

        [...]difficult to see how others can be punished for the same WFH[...]

        Not difficult to see at all; "One rule for thee, another for me," is is a phrase spoken (under one's breath, where the plebs can't hear it) in all megacorps' C-suites from the time of Dickens to the present.

  10. terry 1

    That a good idea?

    During lockdown, my lads stayed with us, eldest is a dev. Admittedly he wouldn't get out of his pit until 11am, however other than the evening meal, he bashed away on the keyboard from 11:01 through until 1-2 in the morning so did far more work / hours than was expected. He just did them when it suited him.

    1. Claptrap314 Silver badge

      Re: That a good idea?

      Flashbacks to Zen and the Art of Computer Programming...

  11. IceC0ld

    for ME, the office working routine is mainly to keep the associated area vibrant too

    as in, the area around my office block, not just my Co, is full of the sort of business's that help to keep you going

    there is a glut of café style mini marts and takeaway options, that, during the lockdown, ALL damn nigh went to the wall :o(

    as there was no other traffic to keep them going, as we came out of the pandemic, the new world arrived in full force, and NOW we have a fully viable option of NOT going to the office

    SO, I can see the need to keep the DAY shift in the office, as they also help to keep a whole raft of other business's going too, but NIGHTS, why do they get called in ?

    we have a night shift going, it is still required to come to the office, on a hybrid routine, but, in all honesty, why ?

    there are no other people around, everywhere that caters to the day crew is closed, as is all the transport options, so you need your own transport

    PRE pandemic, we all attended the office because, well, that's what we did, we had no real knowledge of the alternative

    but NOW, we know, and we have tasted the freedoms that WFH give to US, if not the Co, and yes, some will have the white elephant office in a VERY high price zone, but contracts can be re written.

    the future landed a couple of years back, the genie is well and truly out and about

    so again, for ME, I would WFH fully, and only attend office for the odd time to replace kit, work party, no thanks, I spend way too much time with people I only know through work, I do not wish to associate outside of Co hours, I have family and friends to fill that space

    where am I going with this drivel :o)

    no idea, just to say WFH works for ME

    there needs to be a clearing of the air, a full on paradigm shift on the way we do our jobs

    will it happen, for some, certainly, but I fear we will see some Co's stick to the old ways, and they may need to be dragged kicking into the future :o)

    1. NeilPost

      But that office commute discretionary spend migrates to your local area - to local supermarkets, local businesses and benefits others.

      ..(or you are maybe just keeping your head above water in a cost of living crisis by not spending several hundred bucks a month on commuting costs).

      As for commuting costs - (war-profiteering) oil companies, train companies … they can simple fuck off.

    2. Helcat Silver badge

      Co-worker was in the office for the first time in months the other day. She said she was now feeling nervous about coming into the office as she didn't like being around many people any more. Even just the dozen who were in that day was stressful to her. That's often an overlooked affect of the lockdowns.

      For me: Other than one day a week, the office isn't too bad, so I can chill. Today, for example, I'm the only one in (someone has to be here as there are deliveries to take receipt of). For me, it also helps that my commute is 10 minutes (3 miles) by car, if the weather is bad, or 20 mins by bike, or 45 by foot, so I get some exercise. Plus the office is out in woodland, so lovely area to go for that lunch time walk.

      Where I used to work: 35 mins minimum and that's a 10 mile commute along usually free flowing duel carriageways. Two really bad spots to navigate, plus living by a school made getting back to the house a nightmare (was really lucky one day - just got into the house when the road outside became blocked so badly no one could move for over half an hour - and even then it was an hour before it had sorted itself out. A right fuster cluck caused by people not thinking about where they were parking, with the main culprits being parked on zig-zag (keep clear) markings and across driveways, meaning there were no places for vehicles to pass).

      So these days, I like the office more than being at home when I'm working, partly because there's no real commute for me, and partly because there's a lot more space in the office, in addition to the lunchtime walk :p

      Before - I'd have jumped at the chance to work from home, simply so I didn't have to face the commute, and the worry of if I'd get to my house without hassle or if I'd be tackling parent parking and a blocked drive again (and sometimes an occupied drive - those parents really were an entitled bunch).

  12. Brad Ackerman
    Holmes

    Of course there's a substitute for 'coming together in person'

    Working on your local airport's flight line is a great substitute, assuming you've got a takeoff at least every minute or two. A data center might work, but you'll probably need a boom box pumping out something unmusical to ensure you can't hear yourself think.

    If your employer wants productivity, they'll let you work from home or provide a private office. (Or both. Both is perfectly cromulent.)

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    REALLY??

    Are gathering obsessed nerds somehow missing that Covid spread and killed over a million people, worldwide? Ya'll want to "DIE TOGETHER"?? I will pass on that nonsense. You can have that FAKE TOGETHERNESS.. IT'S NOT WORTH DYING FOR.....

  14. Rahbut

    I don't have an issue with going into the office to interact/"socialise" with colleagues - it can be useful, and you interact with others more naturally than you would over Teams or whatever (e.g. overhearing someone talking about something you're working on, catching up with people when making a cup of tea/coffee etc). Moreover you have an opportunity to interact with people you might not ordinarily interact with when remote. The interaction is more natural/organic rather than contrived/forced.

    And I guess different jobs require different levels of interaction - I don't work in Sales or Marketing, I work in Development... as such my productive time is *not* talking to people, it's doing things.

    The thing I'm not convinced by is the "3 days a week" - I can get all of the benefits of popping into the office in a single afternoon once a week, with diminishing returns for any additional time after that.

    Three days feels arbitrary, and it doesn't take the employees job into account. It feels like it's more about the regressive "bums on seats" mentatility of certain managers, rather than tangible productivity improvements.

    1. Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

      Three days feels arbitrary

      I imagine it's often a case of 'three days in the office and we win' versus 'three days at home and they've won' pettiness.

    2. bo111

      Optimally the office time should be only that: project meetings, lunch, socializing with proper planning, so that different teams can mix by intentional random pairing. Mini conferences to exchange ideas. But ONLY that. One full day a week. Make such meetings obligatory.

      1. M.V. Lipvig Silver badge

        Forget that. My company tried something similar, and the end result was one day of lost productivity each day we had to work in office because on the in-office day nobody really worked. They jawjacked all day long catching up on the gossip. The company was paying us to attend an hour-long meeting that could be summed up in a single emailed paragraph, and were supplying food for us to boot - coldish pizza from a particularly nasty pizza joint. So, keep doing that or just save everyone a huge hassle all the way around? They finally gave it up as a bad job all round, we're now permanent WFH, productivity is great and the company cancelled a shitload of leases so they're saving a ton of dough as well. And, it's saving everyone time and money. With pets and a wife at home my utilities are running anyway, my internet is fixed bandwidth all you can eat (as it should be) and the few extra cents I spend a month running my work rig is dwarfed by what I'm not spending driving 2 hours a day and paying for downtown parking.

    3. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      it can be useful, and you interact with others more naturally than you would over Teams or whatever

      For many people this is likely true. It's not true for everyone.

      Personally, if my employer had an office near me (the closest is about a 5-hour drive) I would spend the occasional day there. I've worked from offices from time to time, and as recently as, oh, 30 years ago I was going to one regularly. I don't mind it, particularly if I can walk or take public transportation so I'm not wasting my time commuting. But generalizations about meeting in person will never be accurate for everyone, and by subscribing to any of them – from "better together" to "WFH is always best" – means discarding some of your potential talent pool.

  15. Charlie Clark Silver badge

    It's in the employment contract

    so it helps if you can read.

    1. Richard 12 Silver badge

      Re: It's in the employment contract

      I think you'll find it is not.

      There are very few employment contracts that specify where work is to be performed.

      1. ExampleOne

        Re: It's in the employment contract

        It does happen.

        I worked for a company that had an office move constrained by staff pointing out that moving office was a material change to their contracts.

  16. wolfetone Silver badge

    There's a substitute for 'coming together in person'

    So all of these Google services promoting the idea of collaborating together remotely don't work then?

    Interesting.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    You can work from home! Well, we should tell our users that they can.

    An interesting trend of these companies, and admittedly more so Meta than Google, is that they develop tools that they promote as enabling WFH and making WFH /work/, yet they then tell their own employees that WFH isn't good enough and that they need to go into the office.

    Seems a bit contradictory.

    1. Someone Else Silver badge

      Re: You can work from home! Well, we should tell our users that they can.

      Seems a bit contradictory hypocritical.

      There, FTFY.

  18. Power Dog

    What Did We Learn

    I find it interesting that Google has apparently learned nothing from the last 4 years. Google prospered during the lockdowns as did many companies. Depending on the company, I'm sure "your results will vary", but there is no getting around the fact that technology has eliminated the need for in-person meetings, business travel (except sales), and coming into an office.

    Managers used to whine about people talking in the hall or going to get coffee. Now they claim that orgs are so collaborative, when what they really aspire to are drones pounding away on keyboards for hours on end.

    As one commenter stated "The horse is out of the barn". Remote working is as effective, offers more flexibility, and greater job satisfaction.

    No one said that you can't go into an office if that's your "thing". Go for it! But the argument to have a blanket workforce policy is so 1950's that it smells like an old wet basement.

  19. Marty McFly Silver badge
    Big Brother

    Butts in chairs = success!

    Any company that measures productivity by the warmth of the chair, is not a management style you want to be working for.

    Icon is your manager watching the chair.

    1. bo111

      Re: Butts in chairs = success!

      And open source code development is a kind of work from home. No offices or performance reviews.

  20. Claptrap314 Silver badge

    What a change

    one of my biggest challenges when I worked for Google (2015-16, ~55,000 employees) was setting up a meeting. Getting a spot on everyone's calendar was Hard. Getting a meeting room? impossible. The switch to online meetings alone would have notably boosted productivity, once people adjusted.

    Google's culture is *special*. It's really difficult to communicate if you've not experienced it. They built some sort of Neverland Ranch that is designed to keep work on your mind constantly. It's really targeted to make green grads think that they are in the best place *ever*. For folks that are married with kids? Not so much.

    Google measures everything. They have a sizable team (People Analytics) dedicated to statistics regarding their workforce. They A/B hiring strategies. They run deep regressions on their population. If it were any other company, I would simply assume that this push is the usual middle-manglement opposition. While I don't doubt that this is a significant factor, I think that there is also a good chance they they're actually seeing a retention issue for their senior-level employees compared to prepandemic, and that they have some sort of data that wfh is part of it.

    The problem, of course, is that this policy is likely to create a much more serious retention issue with those over thirty.

  21. bo111

    Why I prefer to work from home

    1. My own food. Not what is available or left over. Besides there is so much you want to talk about with your colleagues, before you start hating them. And just out of loneliness having to eat together.

    2. My own toilet: not having to sniff someone's shit, looking for available cabin, or cleaning after someone. Or worse: showing my underwear in those ridiculous US toilets with half a meter open space below the door.

    3. Setting my own temperature in the office. Not having uncontrollable cold draft.

    4. Not having a bright sunny background, because someone wants day light in the office. So I will not get blind or have to constantly change the display settings.

    5. Never sharing a desk, or having to look for missing equipment or a clean chair.

    6. Not having to stare at my colleagues' faces sitting right in front of me, because of the stupid low table partitions.

    7. No noise, no random disturbances. Or people talking over the phone or about their project.

    If companies want collaboration, let them reorganize offices specifically for that, and pay for more social events at working hours. Then let us work from home the rest of the time. So we can actually have the job done.

    Besides, I notice, there is a tendency to intentionally avoid chit-chat and do everything in written form for quality and asynchrony reasons. Hardly anyone can afford constant workflow discontinuities.

    Please add your own work preferences below.

    1. bo111

      Re: Why I prefer to work from home

      8. Not having to smell other people at my desk when they use strong perfumes, stink from bad hygiene, or eat at the desk.

      9. Wearing any shoes, slippers, or cloth I want.

      1. M.V. Lipvig Silver badge

        Re: Why I prefer to work from home

        10. Not smelling someone's microwaved leftover fried shrimp.

        11. Not smelling someone's microwaved leftover fried shrimp.

        12. Not smelling someone's microwaved leftover fried shrimp.

        13. Not smelling someone's microwaved leftover fried shrimp.

        14. Not smelling someone's microwaved leftover fried shrimp.

        15. Not smelling someone's microwaved leftover fried shrimp.

        16. Not smelling someone's microwaved leftover fried shrimp.

        17. Not smelling someone's microwaved leftover fried shrimp.

        18. Not smelling someone's microwaved leftover fried shrimp.

        19. Not smelling someone's microwaved leftover fried shrimp.

        20. Not smelling someone's microwaved leftover fried shrimp.

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I’ve never liked co-workers

    See title

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