https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/04/google-offers-on-campus-hotel-special-to-lure-workers-back-in.html
The offer is part of the search giant's efforts to bring remote employees back to offices.
I don't get it. Companies want to make money. Study after study proves that WFH generates greater productivity on average and, therefore, more output and more money. Surely, it must be costing more to maintain massive office buildings and overpay useless middle managers to lord over employees?
But... CONTROL... How do we know they're working? How do we know they're working FOR US?
I work in a role that was something like 80% travel before the pandemic. Now it's 0% travel. The company could not be happier; we're able to offer more competitive services at lower prices than ever before, employees are happier, and our customers really couldn't care less whether we meet them on site.
They're still paying to rent/lease, and to maintain the empty office buildings. They're trying to get their money's worth, even if it ends up costing them in the long run.
My company just sold about 90% of their buildings. Then consolidated whoever left that likes to work in office (I don't know why anyone would lol) in one building. They're still only occupying 8% of that one building.
I don't know why anyone would lol
Plenty of reasons people choose to keep going to the office. No need to hate on them, but also no need to force the rest of us back either. I work full time remote WFH and personally love it.
These are exactly the reason I prefer to work in office. WFH actually makes the office more pleasant, since there is less people there, which gives me more space and less noise.
Unfortunately, the long commute time kind of forced me to be at home. U.S. really need to fix their freaking transport system.
I strongly disagree that there are less distractions in the office.
I live on the east coast but my company is on the west coast, occasionally I fly out and work there and often the first hour, maybe 90 mins of the day is coffee run, breakfast, water cooler chat, stand up, more chit chat, second coffee run, someone comes over to chat, general melee as people muck around, someone makes a loud joke, hour lunch break, late.coming back. afternoon coffee run... it's just chaos
to add to this, time spent on traveling. Also, home is a comfort zone for many workers so it just saves time and increases productivity and you don't want to be kinds tired after the day ends.
I did NOT hate on anyone. I apologize if I sounded like it. I just love being home with my kids.
They can't be dumb enough to fall for the sunk cost fallacy can they? I think it must be something else.
Control. It's all about control, because something something traditions something something profit.
Yep, standard issue throwing good money after bad instead of just taking the L now and moving forward
being devils advocate here, they probably are blinded by the reports of workers who are inefficient at remote work. I want remote work as much as the next guy, I am deeply passionate for it; but I can see why management teams would want inhouse. Easier to monitor and punish mentor the under-performers if you are physically present in the building. The higher ups don't generally care about stats, they only care about what issues are being brought to their plate/causing more work for them... and the underperforming workers are a pretty big additional work for them.
mentor the under-performers if you are physically present in the building
how the mentoring would be different if the under-performers are in the building or they work from home?
Just anecdotally, I noticed that more junior team members were FAR more willing to ask me for help with something after we were pulled back to the office. That can be mitigated with thoughtful collaboration efforts when operating fully remote, but I didn't even know they needed help until they could just pop by my desk and ask for something. And they started doing it frequently.
But to be clear, I greatly prefer full remote for myself and again, thoughtful approaches to team management can solve or mitigate a bunch of the remote work downsides, probably.
with WFH it's generally harder to analyze what areas the worker is struggling, and it also lacks the one on one with the worker. You can still technically do a video call or screen-share but, it's harder to monitor the worker to verify that said mentorship is taking effect, without compromising the privacy of the worker and the system at hand. It's possible to do but, you lose many tools such as constant monitoring of multiple under-performers at once that make it harder to actually monitor and mentor. This is without including that remote work is much harder to actually monitor work activity vs work productivity until it is too late(end of day, missed deadline, etc).
They get huge tax breaks for the bodies those buildings were supposed to bring to their cities. Now that nobody's in them, those cities aren't getting the extra tax money from the office workers anymore, so they're pressuring companies to bring workers back to the office. No giant, money-thirsty corporation wants to maintain a huge, expensive office building, but they're stuck doing so unless they want to sell it at a loss and risk pissing off the owners of whatever palms they had to grease to get the deal in the first place.
It's good for companies that rent office space, but not for companies that own those offices. This is corporate landlords throwing a shitfit, and they have a lot more money and own more news outlets than companies who rent.
There have been further studies that show that work from home may not be as productive. The science doesn't seem to be as settled.
You also may have issues with coordination where some face time would be good on an as-needed basis. It may not need to be full time in the office, but I can see wanting some in person meetings.
They're soooo close to understanding.
Having people stay at this hotel eliminates the commute.
Remote work eliminates the commute.
Now, if the company would simply get with it, they could save money both by not having this asinine hotel idea and by not having all the office space.
I mean its not an absolutely terrible middleground IF EXECUTED PROPERLY.
If I had a job that could be done remotely but they want us in the office for a few days here and there unless my commute was under an hour each way Id be cool with coming in, working, going and grabbing some food with my coworkers, head back to the on campus FREE hotel have an early night and do my second day with no commute the next morning. It doesnt sound that bad provided that were talking like 1 overnight a fortnight max.
Its one of those things thats purely in the execution. They could absolutely nail the idea where people look forward to being asked to come into the office.
But big companies dont like dollars going out for difficult to quantify returns, they will always try to screw down the spend and ratchet up the measurable returns.
So they fuck it up.
Hell no I'm not working 2 straight days like that. I need my downtime, I just can't produce that many hours in a row.
And I don't want to have to be social that long in a row.
If those 2 days were my entire work week and I made fat cash? Maybe
It’s over Google. Let people work wherever they want. If the work is getting done, there’s nothing to complain about.
I just read "Remote: Office Not Required (2013)" and I'd recommend it for anyone who is having these talks at work. It's a quick read and I found my copy at the library. We have to advocate for your interests. I will take an in person meeting over a video call any day of the week, but that in no way means that you can't get the same work done virtually as you can in person and it is significantly less pleasant spending life in an office than having to do a video call zero or more times a day.
It is clear that remote work works just fine. I think the problem runs deeper than productivity or social needs and is more about some unknown insecurities and values that workers and managers have about work. Traditionally work is something that happens above all else. We orchestrate our lives around work. Remote work changes this and that's a huge deal. IMO that's why it's hard to debate this topic using facts around productivity or mental health or even company success, because it's a philosophical debate about how we live.
so they're going to let me work at work and then sleep at work? where do I sign up????
Hey google, I heard people like money. Maybe if you pay willing employees a reasonable amount to commute, they’ll be willing to come in. Otherwise, shut it.