Google, Facebook make statements to staff about working from home for 2020

Ubisoft is going to start letting people return to the office starting from the 11th of May (this Monday).<p>It will be in stages, where people who use specialised equipment (such as high end artistic systems such as well calibrated touch displays, or people who have sound design rooms) will return first, and they will be required to keep at least a seat of distance from their nearest neighbour. I believe we will rapidly return to the office assuming nothing bad occurs following the first wave.<p>To say we as a company are not truly ready for remote work would be a major understatement, our entire security model depends on us being on premises, in fact, if it weren&#x27;t for our recent migration to office365 (and AzureAD) it would not have been possible _at all_. File shares are inaccessible, along with HR resources, basically nothing except outlook is available externally.<p>That said: this has been a fantastic experience for me, my backlog of tasks has become anemic, I attribute this to the fact that I have a home office with real visual and auditory privacy, we aggressively pursue even denser open office landscapes in our studios.[0] I wonder if it&#x27;s the same in Google, though I somehow suspect not...<p>I really hope there is some permanence to the remote working situation for us. Does anyone have a similar experience to me?<p>[0]: Our office: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;Nse-7cJhxpQ?t=92" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;Nse-7cJhxpQ?t=92</a> (screenshot: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;km0UcVk.png" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;km0UcVk.png</a>)

The headline overstates the body of the article a bit although it&#x27;s not really inaccurate.<p>It is an interesting question to ask, come fall or winter, whether--if plenty at some companies can work from home and life&#x2F;productivity goes on for much of a year--what does office life look like going forward?<p>Most companies will still have offices but I wonder if things shift to more of a hoteling type system with conference rooms and other collaboration spaces with people coming in a couple days per week or so.

Some of this is due to local coronavirus lockdowns and the uncertainty around when they will be lifted, but there is also uncertainty about when schools and day cares will open again. Providing child care will keep a lot of people at home even if they aren&#x27;t required to be.<p>On top of that, a lot of people won&#x27;t want to go back to the office, not because they enjoy working from home, but because they will still be afraid of getting the virus. Being at the office probably won&#x27;t feel normal anyway due to continued social distancing and the use of masks.<p>Combine that with concerns that the virus may surge again in the Fall, maybe necessitating another lockdown, and you have a recipe for working at home much longer than what might be legally required.

As someone who has been closely engaged in the tech world, but is outside of the culture of Silicon Valley, one cultural pattern I&#x27;ve noticed over and over again is the tendency for people in SV to state with utter confidence and conviction that we&#x27;ll all be living our lives completely differently than we have been by this time next year, and it will be a permanent and culturally sweeping change.<p>The fact that inevitably only about 10% of those transformations turn out to be sort of true, and happen 10x slower than predicted, never seems to break this cycle of breathless certainty.<p>Maybe it&#x27;s true, maybe this is really it, and the whole idea of closely clustered cities around shared commercial goals and people working closely together in the real world is finally ending. We shall see.

If my company announces WFH for the rest of the year, I&#x27;ll be moving out of San Francisco in a heart beat. The office has been the only thing keeping me here for a long time now.<p>I imagine SF natives might say, &quot;Good riddance, don&#x27;t let the door hit you on the way out,&quot; and I completely agree. I don&#x27;t have issues with the city itself, but the value you get for your money here is completely abysmal if you&#x27;re a renter or potential home buyer.

Amazon and Microsoft have announced similar plans through at least October already as well:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.seattletimes.com&#x2F;business&#x2F;local-business&#x2F;many-businesses-may-follow-amazon-in-stretching-out-work-from-home-policies-crimping-downtown-recovery&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.seattletimes.com&#x2F;business&#x2F;local-business&#x2F;many-bu...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.geekwire.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;microsoft-updates-wfh-policy-allows-employees-work-remotely-october&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.geekwire.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;microsoft-updates-wfh-policy-a...</a>

This is going to have a slow, but material impact on house prices in the Bay area over the next few years.

I worry about offices that open but still allow people to work from home. I think there will be pressures for people to go into the office, creating density issues, or miss out on promotions, etc.

My employer has told us that no one will return until the 2nd week of September. Starting then a few employees in certain roles will return to the office. Over the following months the number of employees returning will gradually be increased but even then it will only be for a couple of days a week with a set schedule so that social distancing is maintained.

My company with 250 employees with offices in Europe and US announced last week that it aims to be 100% remote after this. Of course there will be a transition period, but i won&#x27;t see myself in the office even after summer.<p>To be honest, i have worked remote for at least one year in the past, and i can safely conclude it was way better and more productive than the last 2 months mainly because it was by choice, as well as it was part of an overall remote culture (e.g. meeting regularly in cafes, doing fun activities as a group). However, even after this perfect year i personally couldn&#x27;t do it no more.<p>People are probably making wrong assumptions of how nice the remote work might be due to the last 2 months because there was an overall excuse for their drop in productivity, or their lack of confidence (the world is collapsing how do you expect me to perform 100%?), and some extra time for family, netflix, spotify and social media due to the latter. IMO, in the wrong run the vast majority of people will definitely hate it and beg their companies to return to their offices.<p>With all the above i am not underestimating the health concerns. Of course companies should take minimum risks while the threat is still ongoing. In the positive scenario where it is eliminated companies should rethink their full remote policies (if they apply such) which were imposed during this weird period.

What&#x27;s going to change Jan. 1st? Nothing. I read this as the companies basically saying WFH in perpetuity till the corona virus ends. Or maybe that&#x27;s just common sense I&#x27;m reading into a press release where I shouldn&#x27;t be. The only question now becomes: if governors can shut down all businesses, why would they allow anyone who can WFH to go into the office and endanger others? At this point, we are definitely not ready to reopen safely, but a reopening will happen soon (next few months). Why risk more lives than necessary? I bet we will see this gamble though and thousands will die unnecessarily. Based on the plans Clearly, companies like Tesla show that you cannot leave this in corporate hands. How can governors be so shortsighted and callous with so many lives?

It would be interesting to see how productive Google&#x27;s employees are remotely vs. in-office.

I wish more companies could be this rational.<p>My partner’s team has been almost fully remote for two months, delivered all their work on time, but is expected to be back in the office June 1st because a higher-up wants an in-person meeting. There’s no other reason. It’s absurd.

I wonder how 10-50 person startups companies will handle the move back to working in the office, and how much more bullish they&#x27;ll be than Big Tech

This doesn&#x27;t seem terribly surprising. If there&#x27;s no vaccine anticipated for 2020 and office layout was never designed with social distancing in mind, it seems like those who can work remote should. Personally, I know I rather work in person with my teammates, but I also wouldn&#x27;t want to risk my health or theirs (or any of our loved ones&#x27;) over it. This feels like the responsible thing, to just allow the remainder of the year to be remote&#x2F;from home.<p>I&#x27;m curious what this means long-term for other industries, though, and what a potential recovery looks like. From real estate to hospitality to services, I can&#x27;t begin to comprehend the ripple effect that&#x27;s currently taking shape.

I was asked to return to the office last week. Open office in Berlin :&#x2F;. Everybody of the company will be back in 2-3 weeks.

I have some personal items I&#x27;d like to collect from the office. A board game or three, a bottle of ink, headphones... But beyond that, I&#x27;ll likely work from home until there&#x27;s a vaccine and I&#x27;ve been vaccinated.<p>Time will tell though.

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still from working from home here. our office is open but my side boss said for the group to stay home. Im sure he will let us go in June but probably wont pressure people so WFH will probably be extended.

I&#x27;ve been WFH since March 3rd due to a persistent cough I had from a cold I had the previous week. I really need to replace my recliner as my workspace...