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> But, it's not like Google couldn't afford private offices if they wanted to. Google employs in some of the most expensive real-estate in the world. It's hard

> But, it's not like Google couldn't afford private offices if they wanted to. Google employs in some of the most expensive real-estate in the world. It's hard and takes years to build more, larger office buildings.

ashtonkem 6y ago
They could not do that.
imgabe 6y ago
They don't need to build brand new office buildings from the ground up. They can renovate existing spaces, lease new space and renovate. That could be done in 6 months, tops, if they really wanted to.
- summerlight 6y ago
  AFAIK, it's what they're already doing; Google is one of the largest real estate purchaser in the bay area, consistently spending billions of dollars each year on office spaces. The problem is their growth of workforce has been consistently outpacing their real estate expansion. Probably Google can simply slowdown their speed of hiring, but this might be a deal breaker; office space already has been a major constraint for many team's headcount pre-COVID.
  - novok 6y ago
    A lot of office space has just opened up because of covid, it's a great opportunity to snatch it up.
- jjav 6y ago
  > They don't need to build brand new office buildings from the ground up. Some (many? most?) of those buildings were private offices back in the day anyway, so definitely no new buildings needed.
hoppyhoppy2 6y ago
The point is that they could move toward a system with private offices if they wanted to. Sure, it might be hard and take years to make progress, but they do hard things all the time and are an established and rich-beyond-compare company with plenty of time and money -- and yet they haven't gone that route. Instead they're announcing their plans to use shared desks, chairs with built-in white-noise speakers, and balloon walls for office spaces as people return from working at home. Perhaps this is Phase I of their super-secret long-term plan to transition to private offices, but I somehow doubt it.
saalweachter 6y ago
I'd love to see giving employees an option for either permanent WFH or a private office, with the reduced in-office headcount being leveraged to make room for private offices.

ashtonkem 6y ago

They could not do that.

imgabe 6y ago

They don't need to build brand new office buildings from the ground up. They can renovate existing spaces, lease new space and renovate. That could be done in 6 months, tops, if they really wanted to.

summerlight 6y ago
AFAIK, it's what they're already doing; Google is one of the largest real estate purchaser in the bay area, consistently spending billions of dollars each year on office spaces. The problem is their growth of workforce has been consistently outpacing their real estate expansion. Probably Google can simply slowdown their speed of hiring, but this might be a deal breaker; office space already has been a major constraint for many team's headcount pre-COVID.
- novok 6y ago
  A lot of office space has just opened up because of covid, it's a great opportunity to snatch it up.
jjav 6y ago
> They don't need to build brand new office buildings from the ground up. Some (many? most?) of those buildings were private offices back in the day anyway, so definitely no new buildings needed.

hoppyhoppy2 6y ago

The point is that they could move toward a system with private offices if they wanted to. Sure, it might be hard and take years to make progress, but they do hard things all the time and are an established and rich-beyond-compare company with plenty of time and money -- and yet they haven't gone that route. Instead they're announcing their plans to use shared desks, chairs with built-in white-noise speakers, and balloon walls for office spaces as people return from working at home. Perhaps this is Phase I of their super-secret long-term plan to transition to private offices, but I somehow doubt it.

saalweachter 6y ago

I'd love to see giving employees an option for either permanent WFH or a private office, with the reduced in-office headcount being leveraged to make room for private offices.