Google Return to Office
What are your thoughts?
Google employees are to return to a hybrid schedule 3 days on and 2 days remote. Are companies going to adapt or make similar changes to their policies? Or will people revolt and quit?
Even if people quit, the demand to get a role at Google or Goldman Sachs, especially at the junior/middle manager levels will always be high given that the value add of a stint at a top tech or finance firm is high. Because of this, there's no incentive for those companies to do fully remote work. You may see lesser known firms staying fully remote though to attract top talent, and in that case "paying your dues" would include working in-person for the early part of your career before transitioning to a remote role at a lesser known company (if you really value remote work).
Fully agree. I am experiencing that myself, along with a few others. The portion of accountability is also in question too.
I've seen that being the case overall for the last decade or so. Spend those first couple of years in person, because frankly most of the time I've seen that younger/less experienced people need to in order to actually learn their field completely, learn your team, firm, all of it. Then as you establish your cred and reputation for results you can start taking more liberty of working remotely. Sometimes people get called away to move across state or across country, but they've put in their time to earn that trust and ability to have that autonomy.
My firm does three in, two remote and it's a good balance.
Feel like 3 days in/2 remote is already the most common schedule at many financial firms... GS and BX are the real outliers with mandated 5 days/week
Fully remote has pros and cons but IB/PE are so junior heavy, and it's objectively hard to train and integrate new hires remotely - especially in a role where you're expected to absorb learning through watching / get up to speed in a matter of weeks. I can't see larger IB groups returning to full remote unless they have to.
I am in the office 5 days a week, because part of my job is to also make sure the office is fully operational and functional. You are right, it is difficult to integrate new people into the company and the work culture doing it from home.
It won't last. Especially for tech if anything. I see 2 days in-person max. Once you get a taste of freedom, flexibility, and literal extra sleep it's going to be hard to go back. Watch
Are you saying people will revolt against these new rules?
I'm not sure how much the "extra sleep" matters for tech people who only work 40-50 hours. Also, SWEs clear $150k all in at top firms, so they can easily find a place with roommates less than 10 minutes away from the office. Finally, theses offices are in major cities like LA, NYC, etc. where a lot of young professionals want to live, so being mandated to live there isn't a big deal for many. It's not like Google is forcing people to relocate to Nebraska.
SWE clear way more than 150k.
Which in the silicon valley main campus gets you very very little. That's what WFH has been so readily accepted by the employees because they can take their 400k salary (which isn't enough to buy a proper home in Mountain View, Ca), and live like kings in Idaho, Bend, Oregon, or whatever state liberals from California flee to and ruin.
The young professionals DONT want to live in SF, NYC.
Depends, tech companies with great perks like Google will have a good portion of folks come in for 3 or more days. Even now from what my friends tell me the campus is ~25% full on a given day with junior developers coming in 5 days a week. If you are gonna work anyway, might as well come in for the free breakfast and lunch. There are also people who come in for breakfast and lunch and go home at 2PM to finish up work at home
Do you know what type of food is served at Google? Is it unlimited?
Some firms will always try to gain an edge over other firms. Not only that, but companies can hire globally now. What's the incentive to live in SF and go to the office 3 days a week? I'd be surprised if in 2yrs this was the norm
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This is ridiculous. Get real
You’re an O&G credit analyst bro, you don’t care about your job let alone your career
Most VPs in my group have families and strongly prefer WFH. Even most of the boomer partners prefer WFH, although there are a couple outliers that are craving the ability to micromanage again
Rmember when the Goldman survey came out, how many people do you actually think quit after that? Yes people will quit over having to be in the office / living in a big city, but how many people are in college DYING to be a SWE or analyst at a big tech / finance firm in a big city like NY or SF? For every kid that quits a high-paying corporate job or relocates, how many kids are fighting their ass of to fill the void?
This is anecdotal, but I don’t know ANYONE who’s considering quitting or relocating. On a $200k+ salary, they just stay in their big city apartment and travel almost every weekend.
So glad I don't work at that overhyped company. Lot of you don't know this because you aren't in the industry, but Google is only really prestigious to outsiders and maybe some recruiters, they've been lowballing engineers lately and the work isn't very interesting/innovative. The pros of working at Google are mostly spectacular WLB and stability. If you want really high pay, remote work, interesting work, etc. so many other better companies out there that won't pay you in "prestige".
This description is also very dead-on for Microsoft or Apple. If anyone is bored and wants to see how prestige chasing exists in places like GOOG/AAPL/MSFT, look up stories of the "Microsoft blue badge".
What are some examples of these high pay + remote + interesting work tech companies?
I guaranfuckingtee the entire tech space is going to revolt and demand work from home forever. Except for useless middle management who need to be in the office for brown nosing.
In three years or less no one is going to care and almost everyone will be back in the office.
Will be interesting to see how it plays out. 'Hybrid' as end game seems the case for most employers, but will they eventually migrate this to 5 days in?
Really hope not. But I do believe some companies will keep remote as an option to attract talent, and I also believe the companies ushering people back in the office are GREATLY underestimating how much this will piss people off
I love how people here think that the populace as a whole as an ability to remember what they did a week ago let alone 2 years ago. Will some companies keep flex as a way to attract talent? Sure, but the best companies can get talent regardless of their office policies.
When the divergence in productivity between office based and remoted based companies becomes very obvious this lax policy will change rapidly.
Time will tell. Think you will be surprised by some of the results
Discussions about this are highly skewed in an enviroment like this. 95% of people have zero self motivation when it comes to work.
Agree 100%. Which is why notes of career acceleration, prestige of firms, etc. wont matter at a macro level. Yes to get ahead and seriously advance beyond middle management level you will need to go in person, and sure a top tier firm might be able to mandate 5 days in when their workers already know work life balance isn't part of the offer (banking, consulting, etc.). But it will make things cheaper for companies in terms of office space, allow them a wider talent pool, and can easily poach better talent who want to WFH. People are willing to take pay cuts for that remote option, and not just 10%, 20% but closer to 40% and 50%.
I think 5 days in is completely a thing of the past for talented individuals in most scenarios.
Exactly. Most people won’t give a shit about trying to make partner at KKR or BX.. so they’ll gladly take the comp cut to WFH and spend more time with family and friends. Imo
No you misunderstood my point. My point was that 95% of people need to be monitored by their boss to maintain productivity.
This is quite insightful!
Anecdotal - but we had record years across all metrics while WFH. An unbelievable amount of time is wasted hanging out at the water cooler, people trying to “act busy” etc.. it’s all just a bunch of bullshit
WFH may not be “peak productivity”, but neither is going into the office every single day
There are some productivity gains from WFH, on the other side there are absolutely detractors. I am just saying that this idea that the vast majoirty of people can handle WFH is an insane idea. Trust me as I have employees that are pushing for WFH permanently and I can look at their response times to emails while at home vs the office. Let's just say the different is big enough to drive a cruise ship through.
I feel like there's a huge difference between BO and FO in this regard. Even on WFH days I am responding to emails and pings in 5 minutes max and most people in my group are as well. I think most people at least in FO are motivated to perform and do well, and that's the pool of candidates bank or FAANG have to compete for for talent.
But the discussion more broadly is about the entire work force. Do you honestly think that everyone has the drive and motivation of FO bankers?
I mean I take "tech" by default to mean SWE on this site, and "finance" to mean front office roles in one of IB, AM, S&T, PE, HF. Companies have already been doing RTO on a team by team basis, so based on your reasoning FO/SWE (the roles relevant to this site) can remain hybrid/remote (depending on role) whereas BO would be 5 days in person.
I'm not sure about this so called one case study that he mentions, but every article I know mentions WFH productivity was higher than working in office.
https://www.apollotechnical.com/working-from-home-productivity-statisti…
https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/are-we-really-more-productive-worki…
This is an extremely well written study from UChicago:
https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/BFI_WP_2021-56.pdf
Essentially they state that WFH employees spent slightly more time to achieve the same output/productivity as in office employees. However, the productivity at the end of the day was the same and the extra hour or so spent working was not an issue due to the time savings from getting ready and commuting to the office. So at the end of the day, it was all the same. In addition this additional time takes into consideration the fact that its slightly more difficult to coordinate with your team remotely. However even with all these issues, productivity was almost the same.
Honestly I agree with the above study, I know more people putting in more hours from WFH, but they are all accomplishing their tasks. The only item that has been difficult seems to be training new employees, but I'd much rather spend one hour extra working than 2 hours commuting. Its all a matter of preference though.
PEArbitrage is missing the forest from the trees a bit
Guarantee you this won't be true.
I would imagine most people will just deal with it. And honestly, I probably wouldn't mind a job where it was split like that. Going into the office everyday can be a drag, but so can working remotely. I've done it a few times and you don't realize how much you miss chatting with coworkers, going to lunch together and things like that. The 3/2 split seems like the best of both to me.
Also it's odd to say but going in office 2x a week (fuck 3x lol) makes me appreciate WFH days more.
Companies allowing WFH will become less prestigious in the following months and years. It's a sign of weakness, saying that your white-shoe shop's reputation is so unremarkable that you have to let your imbecile workers below you work from the safety and comfort of their dwellings to attract labourers.
Ivory towers (CVP/PJT/APO/KKR) will be eternally secure from having to compromise (shudder) with the filthy plebs.
This made me chuckle. You're probably not far from the truth. The law and wealth management firms I am surrounded by are all in office 5 days a week. Clients and the likes are literally coming in droves to meet their advisors/attorneys in person (as opposed to a phone call).
IMO junior and senior folks will have to be in office and if your role is IC SWE type role then you can probably get approved to be WFH forever by your manager (would be mid-level with no aspirations of senior level promo). For business roles, fully remote doesn't work as well as hybrid so I only see start-ups which need every edge (since they pay peanuts compared to Google-esque companies) to recruit offering that.
My guess is that it'll remain hybrid at most companies for the next 5+ years. Obviously, it'll be case by case, but I think the days of 5 days in the office are forever gone (with certain exceptions).
I doubt investment banks will go to hybrid in the long term future. COVID was just a test phase and it worked, but employers know that the reason employees want to do WFH is because they can have more free time and live in a different state/country. The tech companies are about as close as you get to adopting a long term WFH policy, but I doubt 5 years from now Google will still be doing hybrid. Once the whole world moves on from COVID and things get back to normal and people stop wearing masks on airplanes, we will work in person. Also, finance is much more relationship and people driven, so you can’t really do business online long term. Whereas tech you can code all day and have a 10 minute zoom meeting with your small group.
My company is voluntary hybrid but they've done so much hiring across the country that I can't see them ever making it mandatory. There are so many employees that don't live where HQ or our 2 satellite offices are that it would be a herculean effort just to get employees in said cities. I imagine this is the case for a ton of startups that tripled/quadrupled their employee numbers over the past ~2 years.
I live in the Bay Area. Have all my life. For all those saying SWE and bankers will revolt and turn down a "hybrid option," ..... bank on the fact that they won't. Do you guys not understand the concept of a multi-year equity vest?
That's how they do it. My company provided a comp share relative to make sure people stay long term. People who do not get company shares take off for higher salaries.
Finance doesn't have a equity vest comp structure until more senior roles. Forgot that SWEs have that. Good point.
however, companies will match unvested equity effectively eliminating the golden handcuffs, so employees are more mobile than before that was a practice
To be honest I do not fully understand why people do not want to go back to offices, I know transportation cost, and time may be less efficient but working alone from home can take a toll in your mental health, personally I think it’s a great idea for people to go back to offices and companies like Google do not need to worry about people quitting, there’s enough demand to fulfill positions.
Bingo. There has not been one consequential business created from the founders "collaborating remotely" through the start-up period. Collaboration is everything, and no it's not the same over the zoom no matter how gen z some kids feel. I run 2 businesses and I absolutely hate it when kids say stupid crap like "Oh I could be just as productive after doing a couple ski runs and then getting back to work." No, just no. It's work. not play.
Plenty of startups operated remotely even pre-pandemic. It saves a lot of money on overhead for businesses that are already strapped for cash.
Lol please tell me about the consequential business you run then thats so influential and cutting edge you needed in person collaboration.
Sure if you think you are changing the world then by all means collaborate in person. But if it's some app that helps firms track user data, sell better targeted ads, or offer a worthless saas solution to some company then I see no reason why this can't be done remotely.
Don't kid yourself, the businesses you run are not that consequential
Currently doing 3+2 in NYC with your choice of days in the office, which is a really nice mix.
Schedule around my in-person meetings / active deals, and depending on the week either take a long weekend so I can fly out a day or two early and work remotely or take a mid-week break and sleep in an extra hour.
I can definitely be just as productive when WFH, but FT remote is lacking in a lot of ways that I think people either miss or ignore because they prefer it (which I totally get). Being in the office 5+ days a week seems pretty unnecessary, but having the team in to collaborate organically yields a lot more than zoom/slack sessions.
I don’t mind if any person or firm prefers full remote, but I’m pretty excited for the future of hybrid setups
What purpose does this even serve? If the firm is arguing from a collaboration perspective at least have everyone in the office the same days. Otherwise, it's pointless.
You align with your team on days to come in but maintain flexibility. It’s been very popular at our firm
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