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I read this a lot, but sincerely have my doubts. Google is a 1.7 trillion dollar company and their real estate portfolio seems to be around 50 billion, which is
by helen___keller 5y ago
I read this a lot, but sincerely have my doubts. Google is a 1.7 trillion dollar company and their real estate portfolio seems to be around 50 billion, which is about 2.5 percent.
Certainly google doesn’t want a big loss on that 50 billion. But I think it’s clear that the success of the remaining 1.65 trillion of the company is much more important.
Rather, management probably thinks in-person work is vital for long term success. If you put yourself into an upper manager’s shoes and think about “googleyness”, it’s probably easy to fool yourself with a bunch of qualitative bullshit and come to the conclusion that remote work is an impediment to building value and should be phased out over N years.
Then all that’s left is deciding the value of N, and how to make the phase-out as painless as possible.
- ocdtrekkie 5y agoIt is very hard to keep people in the cult if you aren't surrounding them. Google works by pushing employees to build their entire identity and social circle around the company. Eat and relax on campus, find yourself a spouse in the company, sure. Work way over full time and have way too many ties to ever, ever leave. Doesn't work if people are at home and can go do stuff outside the campus.
- avgDev 5y agoI feel like this is exactly the reason companies want people in the office. It is a lot harder to leave when you are in the office all the time, you are surrounded mostly by co-workers inside and outside the office. Plus, when you spend 10 hours a day in the office looking for work is difficult. It is super easy to schedule interviews when you are remote with flexible schedule. Plus, when you are remote and you switch companies the change is not as scary and drastic.
- UncleMeat 5y ago> Google works by pushing employees to build their entire identity and social circle around the company. Eat and relax on campus, find yourself a spouse in the company, sure. Work way over full time and have way too many ties to ever, ever leave. This hasn't been my experience at all. Granted, I am one person in one team in one corner of a giant company. But my experience is that when I was in the office I went home consistently at 5:30. On days when I spent time playing pinball or got a massage I still went home at 5:30. I am friends with exactly zero of my coworkers. I don't think I know a single person at Google who hangs out with another Googler I know outside of work. And in spite of making very hard boundaries between work and life, my career growth rate has been in the top 5%ile of engineers at the company.