I really hope Google and other remote-hostile companies lose their prestige as some kind of stamp of excellence that's supposed to signal you're some higher caliber engineer. I never applied to work there because of their absurd interview process (along with other FAANGs) which require candidates to spend months on "interview prep" grinding Leetcode questions - a colossal waste of everyone's time. Even during COVID when all companies were remote I didn't apply because most big corporations tend to require employees to be trapped in their country unless you go through the hassle of transferring offices, and I prefer the freedom to live wherever I want.
This banning of remote work is so backwards, and will only contribute to their demise from their former peak. Next thing you know Google will no longer be seen as a "cool" place to work, and face the same fate as many former behemoths like IBM and Yahoo.
At this point I wonder who even desires to work at companies like Google except for entry level hires, prestige whores, and old people with families wanting stability.
Honestly I think Google has already lost its prestige. But it's not just RTO that's doing it, it's the politically toxic way they did their round of layoffs. RTO is not going to save them, they lost their mojo years ago, and they're now in a spiral towards being an IBM-style "legacy" company and the layoffs (which were just about playing to the stock market) just cemented that. That's the general consensus I see both from Xooglers and Googlers I talk to.
But also in addition to demanding RTO, their actual office situation sucks now. In the years before I quit Google (after 10 years of being there) they just made the actual office experience worse and worse. Cramming people in like sardines. Open concept noisy auditorium workspaces. Messing up the parking situation and requiring people to park and walk 10 minutes away while they ripped up the parking lot to build new castles to cram people into. Overhiring and overstaffing into dubious projects. Lowering quality of food and other perks. And during WFH if you actually wanted to come in there was a whole song and dance about reserving desks, and not getting any kind of permanent comfortable workstation.
I don't like working remotely. But I also despised the commuting situation; I was willing to tolerate it while the office was a pleasant environment. COVID ruined that.
Google started on the path to not being a "cool" company to work at when Ruth Porat came on as CFO. She did great things for the stock price, but long term bad things for the culture of the company.
Say what you will but Google is still a great place to work in my opinion. Work life balance is great, coworkers are solid, mentorship is abundant, culture is still great (subjective, but still true when I compare my experience to friends who work at other companies), there is continual investment in tooling and developer productivity, etc. I'm not just shilling because I work there and want to justify it to myself. I regularly investigate alternatives and cannot justify leaving when I'm happy.
I currently work at Google (though my time will be ending soon due to this shit show) and everything you said couldn’t be farther from the truth at least for me. I want to make sure everyone has both sides here instead of the rosey picture that so many want to paint.
Google is, by far, the worst place I’ve ever worked with the most useless work and uninspiring management and coworkers. I haven’t learned a damn thing in my time there. FB had its problems but I was at least learning there.
To me not being able to be fully remote is a complete non-starter for any job. I've been remote for the last 5 years, no way in hell I'd give up that freedom to be chained to an office again.
Also I'm not interested in wasting my time studying competitive programming questions for those interviews.
But sure if you love grinding Leetcode and don't mind being chained to a desk, I'm sure Google is alright.
Google has already lost its prestige. It’s a code factory, that’s why it demands butts in the seats and formalised interview questions - to ensure homogeneity and obedience. Avoid them like the plague, both as a customer and as an employee. Same goes for amazon and anyone else demanding employees return to office.
It certainly is a big test. Seems the most aggressive RTO companies are traditionally the best performing - Meta Google Goldmans, JPMorgan. Its going to be fascinating in 10 years looking back to find out who was right.
Meta and Google have insane cash cows and they are outliers no matter where their workers work. Other huge companies like Walmart and Amazon have huge workforces that have to work somewhere. I’d like to see breakdowns by industries: healthcare, retail, tech, or oil.
It’s going to be hard to tell what’s related to the Covid shutdown and what’s related to remote working.
Also just the shift in the economy generally. We've entered a new era in the longer term economic cycle. Many of the "rules" that applied from 2008-2022 no longer apply:
Annual two digit increases in ad impressions and clickthroughs and CPMs etc are not necessarily going to happen for Google.
Access to cheap Chinese hardware manufacturing may diminish as more things near-shore, supply chains continue to be messed with by wars (trade and physical) and economic disruption generally.
Tech employee preferences are shifting in terms of what they are willing or able to work on, and where they want to work.
VCs have cut back a huge amount in general, but their emphasis is also shifting.
So, yes, it will be really hard looking back to see what's WFH/RTO related and what's just a result of a rather massive restructuring generally.
This banning of remote work is so backwards, and will only contribute to their demise from their former peak. Next thing you know Google will no longer be seen as a "cool" place to work, and face the same fate as many former behemoths like IBM and Yahoo.
At this point I wonder who even desires to work at companies like Google except for entry level hires, prestige whores, and old people with families wanting stability.