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this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
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For a company that has a reputation of announcing and releasing ambitious projects only to cancel or send them into a "graveyard", this does not surprise me. I do not discount the current housing market as a factor leading into this decision, but regardless, I wasn't expecting much to happen.
Also, I do find the following a bit suspect:
Wasn't Google one of the numerous tech companies that demanded their employees to return back to office?
Don't think Google made that demand, but I may be wrong.
I work for a software dev, and it's heavenly. We're pretty much all remote since the pandemic, but we've contracted back to a single office/headquarters, which is often nearly empty. But it's a nice place when we need to pull together.
My team was out to dinner with the CEO and VPs one night and the CEO was discussing the virtues of in-person office work. And yes, there are solid benefits to collaborating in person, many benefits. I don't believe they outweigh WFH in general, especially for a company like ours. The voluntary hybrid approach is working great for us.
I related a story I found on reddit. Software dev recruiter was laughing about his "hit list". He kept track of local companies starting to mandate a return to office. "LMAO, picking up those employees for WFH offers was like shooting fish in a barrel!" Quite the cautionary tale!
lots of Google teams in the bay area (and globally) have mandatory office days, but pretty much everything is 2 or 3 days a week in office while the rest is work from home.
It's definitely a challenge.
Having worked in very large organizations, it's hard to quantify the influence somewhat random interactions caused by running into someone in a cafeteria or walking down the hallway.
I've had countless impromptu discussions about work that lead to productive changes.
Then there's the team angle - people really do work together better when they have this kind of engagement.
Mind, I say this as someone who is exhausted by all that interaction, so much so that my calendar, every day, has blocks of scheduled "meetings" that are just downtime for me to do work by myself in a quiet space.