I'm a 25-year-old Google software engineer who left California when COVID-19 started — and now I'm unsure if I'll ever go back

• As the coronavirus pandemic shuttered offices across the country, many young professionals began to leave their urban abodes and move to more rural areas of the country.
• Ronald (not his real name) is a 25-year-old Google engineer who made the move from his Santa Clara, California apartment back to his parents' house in Maryland.
• Working from home has been nice, Ronald says, even though he's been "butting heads" with his dad and he misses the Google office perks of free food, snacks, and fitness studios.
• Although he's still paying rent in Santa Clara, Ronald says that if Google allows their employees to work from home indefinitely, he might not even go back to the West Coast.

As told to Jimmy Im, a freelance writer. The subject of this article preferred not to use his real name.

Ronald (not his real name) is a 25-year-old software engineer at Google who recently left the Santa Clara County, California Google Headquarters to move back in with his parents in Maryland. While Google has set July 6 as the date to allow certain employees to voluntarily return to the office in a gradual phase, the company gave employees $1,000 each for expenses to continue to work from home. Ronald not only decided to work from home, but to leave California for the summer to figure out his next move.

Google employees were told they could work from home at the beginning of March when the first coronavirus cases were detected on the west coast of the US — days before the World Health Organization labeled Covid-19 as a pandemic on March 11.

Prior to March 11, we were under 'voluntary work from home' where you could work from home if you chose. We were moved to 'recommended work from home' — all non-essential employees working from home — on March 11. Santa Clara County, where my apartment and Google HQ are, issued a shelter-in-place order on March 16. California Governor Gavin Newsom issued the first statewide stay-at-home order in the US on March 20. A few days later, Google offices closed to non-essential staff.

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When shelter in place was first announced, I didn't have much of a reaction because it was unclear just how serious things would become or how long the lockdown would go on. I think it didn't really occur to me how serious everything was until I went to the grocery store and couldn't find any paper products, cleaning supplies, or baking goods.

Ronald's job at Google was already quite flexible before the lockdown: He could work remotely if he wanted, but the perks at Google HQ were too enticing to pass up.

I originally moved from Arlington, Virginia to Santa Clara, California in May 2019 to start my job as a software engineer working in site reliability engineering. One of my favorite perks of working for Google has been the flexibility. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, I was able to set my own working hours and work remotely from a variety of offices across the country or from home when I needed to. Having dozens of cafeterias serving free food daily, micro-kitchens stocked with snacks, and several gyms and fitness studios at Google's headquarters was also really nice, so unless I was out of town, I would usually be in the office.

As a young, single man, Ronald wasn't impacted as much as his colleagues with families, although he thinks he did get COVID-19.

Some of my coworkers were pretty heavily impacted and had to scale back their work commitments while they continued to work, depending on their circumstances.

For example, my tech lead continued working, but canceled almost all of his meetings because he is now responsible for taking care of and schooling his young son. Others have used banked vacation or sick leave. Everyone's situation is a little bit different.

Leadership at Google has been really good about tempering expectations and has just asked that we be open and honest with our managers if we need to take some time away. For the most part, I think people have maintained a good attitude about it though, and everyone has been pretty accommodating to each person's unique circumstances.

My roommate and I both fell ill at the beginning of the lockdowns and tried getting tests, but there weren't very many tests available at the time and we were told we were ineligible. It definitely could have been COVID-19. We both had fevers and a cough and at that point knew that we both, whether directly or indirectly, had been exposed to someone with the virus.

Lockdown was taking an emotional toll on Ronald, who weighed the odds of living in Santa Clara, especially when Google HQ closed. He decided to take the opportunity to move back home with his parents— although he's still paying rent in Santa Clara.

I think the biggest feeling I had as the lockdown wore on was isolation. I hadn't been in California for a year when this all started. I was very far from the rest of my family on the east coast, and I hadn't built up much of a support system in California yet. It felt like any progress I had made toward making friendships in the area would be erased once things started to reopen.

With sky-high rent and the amenities of the Google office no longer available, living in the suburbs in Silicon Valley just didn't make sense to me. With the idle time to sit around and reflect, I started realizing that there wasn't much I was looking forward to doing in the Bay Area even once things reopened. I think once I realized that, I started to doubt if Silicon Valley was the right place for me to live, coronavirus or not. My parents offered me a place to stay if I wanted to get out of California for a while. I decided that since I wasn't going to be back in the office before the end of the year, I might as well be around family while I figure out next steps.

I'm still paying rent for my apartment. It certainly isn't ideal, but breaking the lease was prohibitively expensive and moving all of my belongings across the country right now didn't seem feasible. It's annoying to pay for an apartment when I'm not even using it, but my parents aren't making me pay rent (yet) so the situation isn't all that different from the one I was in while I was there.

Flying home on Southwest on May 21 was the most nervous he had been during COVID-19 lockdown: The experience was "surreal."

I was definitely nervous about flying home. The experience at the airport was surreal. I was there in the middle of the day on a Thursday before a holiday weekend, and there were barely any people there and nothing was open. There were probably at most 150 passengers at the airport. Can't imagine that there were many more than 200 people at the airport in total.

I flew from San Jose Airport to BWI (Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport) with a layover at LAX (Los Angeles International Airport). LAX was the busiest of the three airports, but almost nothing was open, and people were all wearing face masks and practicing social distancing. On the plane, there were only 30 to 40 people and everyone had their own row. I've never had a row to myself on a plane before so it was pretty awesome to stretch out across the seats, but it's pretty hard to fall asleep with a face mask on.

Face masks were required both in the airport and on the flight. Flight attendants were wearing both masks and gloves, but I didn't see any passengers wearing gloves. The only time I saw people take off their masks on the flight was when they were drinking water or eating, but they put them right back on afterwards.

There was no in-flight beverage or snack service and flight attendants only came by twice to collect garbage. That was the only interaction with them I had.

Compared to California, people in Baltimore were less serious about social distancing and face masks, which was disappointing

When I got to BWI, only about half of the people were wearing masks, people were huddled together and hugging at baggage claim. I felt pretty disappointed, but I wasn't that surprised. Compared to California, Maryland had a pretty weak COVID-19 response, in my opinion, so it wasn't all that shocking to see people not taking it as seriously.

While Ronald has more space at his parents' house compared to his apartment in Santa Clara, it hasn't quite felt the same, and he's "butting heads" with his father, who is now working from home

The biggest positive about being home is having more space. It's easier to draw a line between work and leisure when I can work, eat, and sleep in all different rooms. Also, my parents just adopted two kittens and they are very cute.

The biggest negative is not quite feeling at home. Though this was my home growing up, I haven't lived here in a few years. Getting comfortable is something I didn't anticipate would be this big of an adjustment.

My mom works in the medical field so she still goes to work during the week. My dad is a consultant and is working from home, so most of my day-to-day interactions are with him. We've always butted heads on things and right now is no exception. We're currently arguing over when it's appropriate for our county in Maryland to reopen and why some businesses are essential and others are not. Regardless, I think they're glad to have someone else around the house.

Ronald is still working for Google for now, but he is unsure about his living situation and where to put down permanent roots. His decision will be weighed heavily on whether Google indefinitely allows remote working. For now, Google is allowing it for the rest of the year.

I've decided not to decide anything until July, but eventually I'll need to make a decision about what to do with my place in California. I left all of my stuff there so eventually I'll need to decide if I want to renew my lease, find a new place in the Bay Area once the office reopens, or move to another city completely. Some tech companies are floating the idea of indefinitely allowing remote work, but we haven't been told anything yet.

I'm trying not to make any rash decisions, but moving to New York has been a dream of mine for a while and if we're allowed to work remotely for a while, I might seize this opportunity to make a change.

Thankfully, my job is pretty well-suited to working from home. I work a lot with Googlers in London, so we were already used to conducting meetings over video chat, coordinating across time zones and the general asynchrony of remote work.

Almost all Googlers are working from home right now. We still have a skeleton crew keeping the lights on in our data centers, but other than that, everyone is at home. There hasn't been a firm timeline set on when we can expect to return to the office, but they have pretty much given us their blessing to work remotely for the rest of the year even if the offices reopen before that.

Working from home has been an adjustment, and Ronald feels guilty for his drops in productivity. He prefers working in an office.

Working from home was difficult at first just because it blurred the lines between my work life and my home life. I felt guilty for drops in my productivity and felt like I was expected to be working all the time because I didn't have anything else to do. I started setting a schedule for myself and blocked off my work calendar for time to work out, meditate and play video games with friends, which helped a lot. The other issue was not having a dedicated workspace. Before I moved back to my parents' house, I didn't have a desk so I was working at the kitchen counter, the couch, or my bed. It definitely wasn't good for my back or my productivity.

Personally, I prefer working from an office and maximizing in-person communication so working from home hasn't been all that easy, but I think I'm a lot better prepared for it than most because there wasn't too much of a learning curve.

Ronald says that having more "time and emotional bandwidth" has been a silver lining during the pandemic.

If the pandemic never happened, I probably would be on my couch in Santa Clara, wondering what to do for dinner or planning my next vacation. I definitely wouldn't be contemplating big life decisions like what city I'll be living in come September.

I think there's definitely a silver lining for me with the pandemic. Having the time and emotional bandwidth to evaluate my situation and consider what's important to me in life was something I didn't know I needed. That time to reflect has been invaluable.

The best advice I can give to someone moving right now is to ask for help if you need it. Though it can feel overwhelming, and we're all alone right now, people are generally willing to help in any way they can. Whether that be helping you get to the airport, taking custody of your plants, or finding someone to take over your lease, people will surprise you with their kindness.