throwawaygler1

10+ of my co-workers at Google have left for permanent wfh positions in the last month or so, I suspect that significantly influenced their decision to change their stance. Before that, their attitude was "people will vote with their feet" and when people started actually voting with their feet, this got announced pretty quickly.

I've been meme-ing about it, but I don't think leadership cares anymore. Instead, I just told my manager that there's 99% chance I'm leaving over the summer, it's a good excuse to take some time off after this crazy year anyways.

Fair enough, I can see why it would be beneficial for a noogler, but everyone struggles initially, no matter how much face to face interaction you have. It took me 6+ months before I felt comfortable enough with the internal tools and I'm still learning lots of new things today, despite being 6+ years at the company.

The other thing is, even if we went to the office, we won't necessarily be able to have the same face-to-face experience until the mask and social distancing mandates are done with imo.

I also felt people disinterested on collaborations, everyone has their own goals, I wouldn't attribute it to your country per say.

As a Googler, I'm pretty disappointed with this plan and I think many colleagues are as well. The office that's being pitched right now has no resemblance whatsoever to the one we left. I just don't see why someone would go through 1+hr commute just to social distance/wear masks, use balloon walls and hotdesk. By now, many of us have gotten a good setup at home and are pretty productive.

Even the hybrid model isn't ideal, because you still need to be within commuting distance of the office, if it was something like 2 weeks onsite every 2-3 months, it'd be much more doable imo.

For the ones who really miss the office, they should be able to go, but mandatory return-to-office seems far from ideal until mask mandate is over at the very least.