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Google is saving $1B per year as a result of employees working from home

latimes.com

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Re: Google is saving $1B per year as a result of employees working from home

#151

Post by bpodgursky »

guyzero wrote: post #37
bpodgursky wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a big question is not how essential it is in a vacuum, but how important sales travel is in a competitive landscape. ie, sales would work equally well if everyone did it via Zoom calls. But if one competitor is willing to send reps in-house for in-person meetings, and the rest are just scheduling Zooms... I can see the industry quickly collapsing back into constant sales travel, if there's even a small margin…

I'm sure there's a lot of sales travel at places like G but I feel like G in particular doesn't have a lot of sales travel. A lot of the travel is just employees working together for whatever internal tasks.

Maybe, but we had GCP reps in-house for days when we were figuring out our cloud strategy. So I do think there's some even at G.

Re: Google is saving $1B per year as a result of employees working from home

#152

Post by aaronblohowiak »

astrange wrote: post #147
bradlys wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Senior eng makes $400k+ TC. You're rarely buying a house alone. Most eng at FAANG end up marrying others who are similar. Easy to see $600k+ TC. You can buy a home nearby. Sunnyvale has homes for $2m or less and you can afford it at $600K household. Very reasonable commute. If you want 3000+ sqft and 5-bath homes then yeah, you're out of luck. Hit executive level or startup riches for that one. To act like Google doe…

> Senior eng makes $400k+ TC. This is not true. Maybe people are confusing principal with senior? That or you're counting multi-year stock grants in the current year.

Levels.FYI for L5 (senior SWE) shows median annual at 350. Levels.FYI lags behind because they keep around old data. Principal at G is at 992k median.

Re: Google is saving $1B per year as a result of employees working from home

#153

Post by [deleted] »

jeffbee wrote: post #18
eli wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At google in particular isn’t the on-site food and entertainment a big perk? Seems like even a slightly worse employee retention rate could really cut into this savings.

This is what I wonder about Dropbox. There wasn’t really any particular reason to work there except the food. The RSUs weren’t going anywhere, the technical culture wasn’t amazing, but the food was incredible. In a 100% remote Dropbox, did they bump everybody’s comp by 20%?

[deleted]

Re: Google is saving $1B per year as a result of employees working from home

#154

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

katbyte wrote: post #128

You know what WFH is way WAY more for efficient and good for? A employees health, wellbeing and happiness! which imho is more important than profits or the company.

WFH has been good for neither my health, well-being, nor productivity.

Re: Google is saving $1B per year as a result of employees working from home

#155

Post by megablast »

lamontcg wrote: post #104
aabhay wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about office perks, maintenance of space, renovation, staff, commuter credits, office events, snacks, lunches, dinner, equipment, secretaries, and security?

They've been paying rent on their offices the whole time. If they went permanent WFH they could sell/lease those spaces and probably save billions. Not to mention the cost all the employees have to endure for traveling to work, wear on vehicles, gas, repairs, collisions, insurance, medical payouts due to car accidents, etc. Plus just generally the externalities of higher carbon emissions.

> If they went permanent WFH they could sell/lease those spaces and probably save billions.

To whom? Everybody is moving to work from home.

Re: Google is saving $1B per year as a result of employees working from home

#156

Post by paxys »

Guest42 wrote: post #150
seoaeu wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like one expense they saved on is sending out recruiters and engineers to likely thousands of career fairs, recruiting sessions, etc. Nobody would reasonably argue that skipping all of them is a sustainable strategy long term even if it hasn't hurt them much so far.

With the amount of resumes they get, I'd question how important it is for tier 1 companies. I have gone to career fairs and learned a great deal about companies I had never heard of, but it seems as though Google would just receive thousands of applications per opening and approach it algorithmically anyways. Although I've had contacts get poached via LinkedIn or given challenges from Googling certain tech topics.

It helps because they can also do the initial screening round with basically the entire graduating CS class in-person at the university.

Re: Google is saving $1B per year as a result of employees working from home

#157

Post by notriddle »

bobthepanda wrote: post #114
dcolkitt wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a parent, who does WFH, and definitely disagree about the preferability of office work. Sure my kids will occasionally pop their heads in the door to say hello. I guess that's an occasional distraction, which has some small productivity cost. You know what hurts productivity more? The soul-crushing experience of missing out on watching your kids grow up because you're spending all day in an office or commuting. I…

We could just let people do whatever they wanted. It is unclear why, having complained about being forced to work from the office, the set of employees happy to work from now think imposing their preferences on everybody else is supposed to be better for everyone.

There is one good reason: if most of your team works at the office, and you're working from home, it's difficult to make sure that you're not left out of discussions.

Re: Google is saving $1B per year as a result of employees working from home

#159

Post by vzaliva »

They could have saved the same amount of money by not providing numerous office perks, limiting employee travel, and cramping employees into smaller offices (I think square footage at average home office is less that at Googlepex). So basicaly they took away some benefits. If this to continue long-term, eventually they would be forced to compensate for these loses to stay competitive in the job market by salary raises or by providing some other perks for work-from-home employees.

Re: Google is saving $1B per year as a result of employees working from home

#160

Post by aaronblohowiak »

jedberg wrote: post #90
dougbarrett wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe for older kids that are involved in extracurricular activities, but for younger kids that won't be the case. With a 4 year old starting pre-k this fall, I'll be lucky to have a distraction free work environment from 9-2 daily.

Pre-pandemic I had a 2 and 4 year old. The 4 year old was gone all day between 9 and 2 MWF for preschool, and we had a nanny the rest of the time. I suspect post-pandemic it will be similar. Someone who works at Google can probably afford a nanny. It's just because people aren't comfortable with others in their home right now that it's a problem.

There is a huge nanny crunch / there are much longer lead times for high-end nannies now..
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