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Google has gotten so cheap, employees now have to share desks
- xtiansimon 4y agoLOL. I worked for SGI in the late 1990s and was hired as a contractor in the marketing department. I recall having to share desk space on Rengstorff Ave in Mountain View —-which is, of course , where Google HQ is currently located.
- burna_aws_acct 4y agoIMO, it's to make them uncomfortable (i.e., don't get too comfy). Change is imminent. What that change is, not exactly sure.
- IdiocyInAction 4y agoI guess it's to make people quit and get out of paying severance?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- zx8080 4y agoAre they required to go to office? Or is working allowed remotely?
- kirkules 4y agoSome positions are remote but many are hybrid, required to go in some fraction of days
- JPKab 4y agoClickbait title because arstechnica is a garbage publication. Employees are expected to work 2 days a week out of the office, and will swap the desk with another employee. They will not sit at the same desk at the same time. Doing anything less is wasteful, and if Google was doing this before it was robbing investors.
- lovich 4y ago> Doing anything less is wasteful, and if Google was doing this before it was robbing investors. Overton window keeps moving in the direction of fuck the employees to benefit the shareholders I guess. Having a personalized space used to not be considered a perk but table stacks for working at a company not too long ago. I get that the employees aren’t in office all week but that’s kinda on google for not having enough desks given that they mandated a return to office.
- robswc 4y agoI honestly hate open offices so much. I'm constantly amazed any work gets done with the layout.
- JPKab 4y agoI despise them. I'm convinced that they became "cool" purely for two reasons: 1.) Bosses loved the feeling of superiority they had by having their own office but everyone else is sitting out in the open where they can easily see them all and bother them at a moment's notice. 2.) Fresh out of college grads would see them and get this feeling of a cool, buzzing, hypersocial hive that made them feel all good inside.
- robswc 4y agoYep, I will 100% admit they "look better" but I'm convinced productivity is not the same. I'm all for having "collaborative" spaces but surely the optimal environment is one where employees can get hours of work in without distraction. With an open office, the opportunity for distraction is practically everywhere.
- imroot 4y agoAccountants love the cost — you can not only save money on construction costs, you can squeeze more bodies in there…
- 4y ago
- omeze 4y agoGoogle (at least circa 2014 when I graduated) has slowly taken on the image of a “retirement home” (i.e. where you go to turn your brain off and clock in to get paid) in elite STEM undergrad programs. Oracle had solidified their spot, but at least at Google it used to be easy to find interesting teams if you knew people there to navigate the team matching process. Now it’s decline is in full swing, its sad but seems inevitable for behemoths of human capital.
- naikrovek 4y agoonce you're a publicly traded company for a while, the company will always eventually go down this spiral. completely independent of success, the company will go from a great place to work to a soulless corporate machine, and it is ALWAYS the people who are in charge of the money who cause this. every freaking time it is the love of profit over nearly all else and the fear of wasting money in any way which are responsible for this.
- gedy 4y agoNo connection to Google, but I'd be cautious about ageism in this type of thinking. Been at places before where young guys mostly burn themselves into the ground "working hard" coding all sorts of stuff that really didn't matter, or sacrificing their personal time and life for code. The older guys were considered "unmotivated" because they didn't overwork when they knew it wouldn't matter.
- colechristensen 4y agoThis is embarrassing and just degrading to employees.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Galanwe 4y ago> Google has an internal-only virtual desktop tool for thin clients called "CloudTop" that it would like employees to transition to This is the end. All thin client/remote desktop solutions that I have used are laggy enough to piss off a programmer, while fast enough to fool a manager. It's the perfect killing blow to productivity and morale.
- thorncorona 4y agoCloud tops are quite good. I’ve enjoyed using them. Run a mbp as your carry around, and then everything else runs on an overbuilt server vm with a direct connection to shared storage. I’m able to sync to head + rebuild 100k+ files in < 5 mins
- Galanwe 4y agoHow good is it when working from outside the office, on a rate from "painful" to "unusable"?
- thorncorona 4y agoI’ve literally never had issues. So like 9/10. Works perfectly when on coffee shop wifi. Google tooling works perfectly with it.
- jareds 4y agoWhat's the audio latency? I've found remote desktop to be a bad experience as a blind developer. At a prior job we used thin clients which had decent audio performance from my desk in the office. Once Covid hit and we had to connect from home audio latency was awful and it took me an act of god to get a corporate provided laptop.
- thorncorona 4y agoThey are more like a super well connected SSH client. I think you could probably get X11 / audio up on it but I’ve never had the need to. Development on an internal fork of VS code (web page) which sets up all the build tooling for you to use your cloud top as your build eng. Includes ML based completion as well which is nice. So if you have used VS code I’d imagine the accessibility is similar as audio is rendered locally?
- MrFoof 4y agoHonestly, I'm surprised that we haven't yet seen companies move to "bunk cubicles", with one cubicle directly on top of the other.
- water-your-self 4y agoWe have to litigate the fire authorities first
- noisy_boy 4y agoI'm waiting for "field work" where everyone just finds a spot in a giant tent.
- LargoLasskhyfv 4y agoIf you see some building as a large tent, where the people roll a little cabinet with their stuff to some free space that is changing every other day, that already has arrived. I think it's called 'flexible workspace'.
- 6510 4y agothere are pictures of this online
- ldjkfkdsjnv 4y agoClearly a signal that search is about to go through a massive change. AI chatbots will compete with Google search and take market share. The company is boarding up the windows
- AlbertCory 4y agoGoogle has been getting steadily stingier with personal space for a long time. My last job there was at Crittenden, and the desks were next to each other with no dividers whatsoever. That was the worst of my twelve or so locations, by far. But this really takes the prize. Personal story: in the 1980's I had about a half hour interview with Eric Schmidt, at Sun (yes, that Eric Schmidt). The one thing I remember is, he said that if you looked at the cost for private offices vs. cubicles, they were about the same, and that must be the case because the market will equilibrate. This was at a time when private offices still existed. I don't think Google's Real Estate division got the message.
- boulos 4y ago> if you looked at the cost for private offices vs. cubicles, they were about the same, and that must be the case because the market will equilibrate ... How? That is, through what mechanism?
- sshine 4y agoStep 1: Get a Tardis.
- threatripper 4y agoBy the quality of the work. Whatever you save on one end you will have to pay on another end. Or the less competitive thing will go out of market completely. At least if you assume a rational market with fully rational actors.
- AlbertCory 4y agoI could explain what I think he meant, but it's more fun to watch everyone else "explain" it.
- pipeline_peak 4y agoGoogle has gotten so cheap, they’re trying to find new ways to avoiding laying off employees like the rest of big tech
- biggedyb 4y agoI suspect it's because the building leases are measured in years but the HR contracts are measured in months...
- rhaway84773 4y agoThis makes sense though. If people aren’t coming in 5 days a week, why should they have dedicated spaces for 5 days? We have a hoteling system which works pretty well. You get lockers you can place things you don’t want to carry each time in (KB/Mouse/Pen stand/cables/etc for me) and before I come to the office I reserve a desk and plug in my laptop into the docking station and I have my whole setup ready (well in my case I also need to plug in my Keyboard and mouse, but for most people thars all they need). I preferred my dedicated space with all my stuff, but when no one’s coming in 5 days a week the lack of a dedicated space makes complete sense.
- stareatgoats 4y agoAgree. It goes against my grain to seem in support of anything FANG companies do, but this is just a logical extension of the WFH trend. One of the reasons it will stay is that it enables corps to save on office space, and Google is simply ahead of the curve: the businesses that realize this cost saving effect first will have an advantage. Most employees will likely see the small discomfort as a fair price to pay for being able to work from home many/most days. (Not counting the vocal minority that seem to love commuting, office work, mingling and watercooler chatting).