I think the "your boss expects/forces you to" interpretation from the grand parent isn't generally what happens (at Google). I haven't seen that at all. It's rather more common that you realize on your own that a certain amount of travel is highly effective for building and maintaining the relationships you need to do your job.
This is extremely strongly correlated with your distance from HQ and with the seniority of your position in the company.
For what it's worth, I hold a reasonably senior role (at Google) in EMEA and I'm living off of the relationships I built in the two years prior to the pandemic. I traveled nearly 25% of the time then. Ask your nearest director+ in EMEA engineering and they'll recognize this at least in principle. This is likely to be very similar in other companies that are globally distributed but with a strong epicenter somewhere. I don't think it's particularly Google specific except in that Google engineering isn't very top down/command-and-control, so relationships in a complex org are an even more important tool for getting things done than they would be in a more hierarchical environment.
Sure, this is definitely an "eating your seed corn" sort of situation. And it's definitely very asymmetric at Google - a senior director outside of MTV definitely has to come to meet people in Mountain View from time to time. A senior director in MTV just expects everyone to come to them.
I think the "your boss expects/forces you to" interpretation from the grand parent isn't generally what happens (at Google). I haven't seen that at all. It's rather more common that you realize on your own that a certain amount of travel is highly effective for building and maintaining the relationships you need to do your job.
This is extremely strongly correlated with your distance from HQ and with the seniority of your position in the company.
For what it's worth, I hold a reasonably senior role (at Google) in EMEA and I'm living off of the relationships I built in the two years prior to the pandemic. I traveled nearly 25% of the time then. Ask your nearest director+ in EMEA engineering and they'll recognize this at least in principle. This is likely to be very similar in other companies that are globally distributed but with a strong epicenter somewhere. I don't think it's particularly Google specific except in that Google engineering isn't very top down/command-and-control, so relationships in a complex org are an even more important tool for getting things done than they would be in a more hierarchical environment.