Some companies make exceptions for people who cannot go to an offsite for various reasons. It will be interesting to see what Dropbox policy is, but I agree with you that 5 weeks is a lot for individual contributors (except sales team).
I had a job that required and expected you to be able to travel to a customer site and it was stated up front in the job requirements (cloud consulting). But when we had internal team meetings, no one put any pressure on you to travel.
But in my opinion it would have been dumb not to travel to meet your coworkers and manager in person. Besides, many of us would bring our spouses along and pay for their ticket out of pocket and extend our stay over the weekend if it was some place they wanted to come.
> [...] Dropbox was using a 90/10 rule, with 90% of the year spent on remote work and the remaining 10% spent on a handful of employee off-sites.
What's an "employee off-site"? Rented offices or something?
Kind of sounds like the worst of both worlds to me. You still have to live close enough to whatever one of those sites is to commute in a few weeks a year, but you get none of the social benefits since I'm sure nobody's schedules will match up.
How is that better than just full remote, or remote with completely optional office space?
An offsite is [in my experience] a dedicated series of days where a team comes together in one place (including from remote and satellite offices) to discuss strategy or other high importance problems together. Historically they were held "off site" (usually in someplace cool like a resort) Usually you have meeting(s) during the day and then there's a social activity in the afternoon or evening. Sometimes the location is someplace really desirable (Hawaii, Tahoe, etc) and you spend a few days alternating between focused meetings and fun activities.
Recently many companies are cutting back on the fun part of the offsites and holding them onsite or nearby the office to reduce costs. I've been to a few "on-site offsites" that were just in a different building than we normally sit in with light refreshments served afterwards. I imagine since Dropbox doesn't have much of an office presence anymore they probably still do destination offsites and fly people in.
Source: this is just something you learn working in tech in the bay area
I'm pretty sure Dropbox flies people in for these.
Thanks for the explanation. Jesus though, they're going to spend 10% of the year doing that? Maybe only part of the company? As an engineer I really can't imagine spending 30ish days of the year doing that. Must be just for upper management or something?
Yeah I'd much rather spend that extra week per quarter on vacation instead, and I'd probably get about as much done. My job just does not require 1 week of solid meetings per quarter.
They can be none of that but regular work, just in person except you have the time to bind in person and decide (or not) to share time together after work.
My team is split across several countries, I don't need to see my teammates in person on a daily basis but I like to have the chance to see them once or twice a year and also tackle specific problems, run some workshop together during hackathons and participate in a teambuilding event.
The current company I'm working for, VC funded startup, does two company wide offsites per year, 5 days (one work week) each. Then another department wide offsite for another 5 days in another quarter, then the final quarter is a team-wide one that is up to each individual team to schedule and intended to last 4-5 days. So that tracks pretty closely.
TBH I feel like it's just a little much, but not much more than a little much. In other words, I think probably two weeks (10 full days) is probably a good minimum because I do see some value in seeing the team once or twice a year in person. So somewhere between 10-20 full days is probably the sweet spot for me.
More like 20-22 days or so if you are working 5 days a week, have around 25 days off + all the public holidays, which are about 4 weeks.
2 weeks every 6 months doesn't sound extraordinary to me. These are not vacation, these are regular work days. For an engineer I would imagine that would be what we call hackathons.
It's not 30 days typically, IME it's around a week or so, sometimes even just a few days. An off-site is typically also somewhere pleasurable.
It's also usually a huge, ridiculous cost to the company. A few companies ago they spent a million or so sending us 200 employees to an island. It would have been cool if it hadn't been immediately followed by layoffs citing cash burn being too high.
Not sure what their version is, but at my employer (Canonical) we are globally remote in >70 countries accross all timezones. (Almost) everyone works from home, but everyone gets together in very large events for 2-4 weeks per year. The company flies everyone to an always changing location to meet at a hotel with many many meeting rooms for the week. The company pays for flights, accomodation, meals, etc. It's a short trip for some and a much longer trip for others like me being in Australia :)
The main part of the working week is a fairly dense schedule of both inter-team and cross-team meetings. You can get everyone together from all teams in the same timezone for various meetings, discussions or even pairing sessions to work together on things for the week. We plan and make decisions to set the pace and direction for the next 3-6 months of work remote.
While this definitely differs from person to person, for many it also functions very well as a great way to meet your colleagues face to face, especially for those out of your timezones. Many will have social dinners in various groups, a team dinner, head out for some sight seeing during the week or weekend before/after, etc. The location we travel to is always changing so you get a little taste of travelling to many different places and you can easily tack on a couple of days holiday before/after, etc.
It's a big part of what has made working remote here great for me. I've worked remote since 2007 when I joined MySQL, it was a similar travel setup at MySQL but once we got acquired by Sun and later Oracle for various reasons including the GFC such travel stopped and I never saw my colleagues face to face. In my particular team at that time we also never really used webcam chat etc so it was quite isolating - pretty much everything was done on Chat. It was a refreshing change moving here and getting to travel and see people, as well as chat on video a few times a week.
It definitely has it's challenges, especially for those with families. A subset of people travel for 2 weeks at a time and even the 1 week at a time (twice a year) that everyone does can be challenging for those with families. However I personally contrast that with the fact I have 0 commute time every other day of the year - easily saving me the 0.5-2 hours per day travel time that is pretty common at least in Australia (or more, I have gotten many stories of 3+ hours travel time from candidates in India). This leaves me with a lot more time with my young kids and family every day. I see them at both ends of every day - no leaving before people are awake or getting home when they are in bed already. Assuming 1 hour travel per day that would I guess equate to ~11 days a year saved not travelling? So kindof roughs out I guess - though I had never done that calculation until just now.
As a former Dropbox employee, I find this wryly amusing. I remember attending a company-wide all hands in 2016 or so where someone asked about having a satellite office in the South San Francisco Bay (the company HQ was in San Francisco at the time). The very paternalistic answer was that work was better when everyone was in the same office. This was also at a time when we had "No Meeting Wednesdays" but were strongly told this shouldn't be taken as "WFH Wednesdays".
I actually very much enjoyed working from the Dropbox office on Brannan st. I thought it was a well-designed space (for open plan), good for team cohesion, and the Tuckshop was out of this world. I didn't like my commute, though, which was way too long at an hour each way and ultimately was a significant contributor to my leaving.
Ah well. I'm glad there are options out there. Personally, I know I want to work from an office with a short commute.
Yes. It was probably a little more. 10 minutes driving, 45 minutes train, 10 minutes walking each way. I could use the train time for other things but it was very crowded in those days and often standing room only. It was too long, even if you like working co-located.
That sounds cool. I'm glad you remember it fondly - not to gripe among the privileged, but I have never worked in a cool office like that. With all of the endlessly discussed disadvantages and implications (maybe the employer is doing it so you're secretly expected to be there absurd hours, whatever, I don't know), I do always wonder what it would have been like to have spent some of my career anywhere besides my house and a building out of "Office Space".
At this phase, to your point, it's the commute for me. 15-20 sounds perfect, I can't do 1 hour anymore.
Worst commute I ever had was fresh out of school, I worked briefly as a contractor at SimpliSafe when they were 6 people in an office. I would walk a mile from my apartment in Attleboro, MA to the MBTA commuter rail station, 45 minutes into South Station, change to the green line, change to the red line at Park St, 20-30minutes to Inman Square, then walk another, I don't know. 20 minutes? So, depending on the day - which trains I caught, how congested the T was, somewhere in the neighborhood of 1h45m - 2h15m, one way? In January in Cambridge MA - yeesh!
On some level I regret not sticking around, I didn't last long and boy did they blow up. I probably would have died on that commute at some point from a heart attack at 22, though.
Oof. Yeah, I've done a lot of different styles of commutes (walk, bike, public transit, drive) over the years. My favorite is something that is ~20 minutes door to door involving physical activity (walking or biking). It does help tremendously if you can be flexible about when you arrive/leave as well. Weather is also a concern—I did do a 25 minute walking commute in Boston but it could be a problem with snow and rain.
I do believe that fully remote teams should meet in person, but 90/10 is a bit much.
At my last company, there would be a fiscal year kick-off event in February where the entire company would meet. Last year was in Chamonix, France. This year was Da Nong, Vietnam, though I got laid off two weeks before that event happened.
They would also do regional gatherings around Sept/Oct. Last year, the Western half of the USA met in Lake Tahoe, and the Eastern half met in some lodge in Connecticut, and everyone else (Mostly Europe) met in Spain.
I think it's really important to meet the human being behind the screen.
My current employer is mostly remote, but does have an office in Santa Clara. My team did an on-site there a few months ago. Was great to meet everyone and strategize for the next year. Sure, we were in the meeting room for hours, but I'd rather spend hours in a meeting room than hours on a Zoom call.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 86.3 ms ] threadI think 5 is the upper-bound for my tolerance. Honestly though when I have kids, it will be unreasonable.
But in my opinion it would have been dumb not to travel to meet your coworkers and manager in person. Besides, many of us would bring our spouses along and pay for their ticket out of pocket and extend our stay over the weekend if it was some place they wanted to come.
Trying to think five years back what was considered unreasonable was rather the other way around, from a ratio point if view...
It gives me hope that some things can change for the better much faster than we anticipate.
What's an "employee off-site"? Rented offices or something?
Kind of sounds like the worst of both worlds to me. You still have to live close enough to whatever one of those sites is to commute in a few weeks a year, but you get none of the social benefits since I'm sure nobody's schedules will match up.
How is that better than just full remote, or remote with completely optional office space?
Recently many companies are cutting back on the fun part of the offsites and holding them onsite or nearby the office to reduce costs. I've been to a few "on-site offsites" that were just in a different building than we normally sit in with light refreshments served afterwards. I imagine since Dropbox doesn't have much of an office presence anymore they probably still do destination offsites and fly people in.
Source: this is just something you learn working in tech in the bay area
I'm pretty sure Dropbox flies people in for these.
My team is split across several countries, I don't need to see my teammates in person on a daily basis but I like to have the chance to see them once or twice a year and also tackle specific problems, run some workshop together during hackathons and participate in a teambuilding event.
TBH I feel like it's just a little much, but not much more than a little much. In other words, I think probably two weeks (10 full days) is probably a good minimum because I do see some value in seeing the team once or twice a year in person. So somewhere between 10-20 full days is probably the sweet spot for me.
2 weeks every 6 months doesn't sound extraordinary to me. These are not vacation, these are regular work days. For an engineer I would imagine that would be what we call hackathons.
It's also usually a huge, ridiculous cost to the company. A few companies ago they spent a million or so sending us 200 employees to an island. It would have been cool if it hadn't been immediately followed by layoffs citing cash burn being too high.
The main part of the working week is a fairly dense schedule of both inter-team and cross-team meetings. You can get everyone together from all teams in the same timezone for various meetings, discussions or even pairing sessions to work together on things for the week. We plan and make decisions to set the pace and direction for the next 3-6 months of work remote.
While this definitely differs from person to person, for many it also functions very well as a great way to meet your colleagues face to face, especially for those out of your timezones. Many will have social dinners in various groups, a team dinner, head out for some sight seeing during the week or weekend before/after, etc. The location we travel to is always changing so you get a little taste of travelling to many different places and you can easily tack on a couple of days holiday before/after, etc.
It's a big part of what has made working remote here great for me. I've worked remote since 2007 when I joined MySQL, it was a similar travel setup at MySQL but once we got acquired by Sun and later Oracle for various reasons including the GFC such travel stopped and I never saw my colleagues face to face. In my particular team at that time we also never really used webcam chat etc so it was quite isolating - pretty much everything was done on Chat. It was a refreshing change moving here and getting to travel and see people, as well as chat on video a few times a week.
It definitely has it's challenges, especially for those with families. A subset of people travel for 2 weeks at a time and even the 1 week at a time (twice a year) that everyone does can be challenging for those with families. However I personally contrast that with the fact I have 0 commute time every other day of the year - easily saving me the 0.5-2 hours per day travel time that is pretty common at least in Australia (or more, I have gotten many stories of 3+ hours travel time from candidates in India). This leaves me with a lot more time with my young kids and family every day. I see them at both ends of every day - no leaving before people are awake or getting home when they are in bed already. Assuming 1 hour travel per day that would I guess equate to ~11 days a year saved not travelling? So kindof roughs out I guess - though I had never done that calculation until just now.
I actually very much enjoyed working from the Dropbox office on Brannan st. I thought it was a well-designed space (for open plan), good for team cohesion, and the Tuckshop was out of this world. I didn't like my commute, though, which was way too long at an hour each way and ultimately was a significant contributor to my leaving.
Ah well. I'm glad there are options out there. Personally, I know I want to work from an office with a short commute.
Times change, though. A lot of companies back then thought remote work would negatively impact productivity.
Then Covid happened, and mandatory remote work demonstrated that it actually can work (for the right company, etc.).
Got to love performative work
At this phase, to your point, it's the commute for me. 15-20 sounds perfect, I can't do 1 hour anymore.
Worst commute I ever had was fresh out of school, I worked briefly as a contractor at SimpliSafe when they were 6 people in an office. I would walk a mile from my apartment in Attleboro, MA to the MBTA commuter rail station, 45 minutes into South Station, change to the green line, change to the red line at Park St, 20-30minutes to Inman Square, then walk another, I don't know. 20 minutes? So, depending on the day - which trains I caught, how congested the T was, somewhere in the neighborhood of 1h45m - 2h15m, one way? In January in Cambridge MA - yeesh!
On some level I regret not sticking around, I didn't last long and boy did they blow up. I probably would have died on that commute at some point from a heart attack at 22, though.
At my last company, there would be a fiscal year kick-off event in February where the entire company would meet. Last year was in Chamonix, France. This year was Da Nong, Vietnam, though I got laid off two weeks before that event happened.
They would also do regional gatherings around Sept/Oct. Last year, the Western half of the USA met in Lake Tahoe, and the Eastern half met in some lodge in Connecticut, and everyone else (Mostly Europe) met in Spain.
I think it's really important to meet the human being behind the screen.
My current employer is mostly remote, but does have an office in Santa Clara. My team did an on-site there a few months ago. Was great to meet everyone and strategize for the next year. Sure, we were in the meeting room for hours, but I'd rather spend hours in a meeting room than hours on a Zoom call.
> I think it's really important to meet the human being behind the screen.
> I'd rather spend hours in a meeting room than hours on a Zoom call.
But why?