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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

#171

Post by iancmceachern »

newusr429 wrote: post #144
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.

I was the biggest advocate for WFH in the last year but recently I feel pretty down. Life feels so repetitive. Part of it is possibly lockdown, but a bigger part I think is that I have way more free time to think about things. All the shitty things about open office and commuting seemed to serve as a distraction that kept me more occupied. It's weird. I'm not saying WFH is bad, but there are definitely some effects t…

Me to, exactly this and going into the office a few days a week has really helped me in the last few weeks.

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

#172

Post by paulryanrogers »

ryandrake wrote: post #164
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…

Yea commute + kid is the key motivation for WFH for me. My Bay Area commute is 4+ hours per day, depending on traffic. This means in order to guarantee I can be at work for my first 8AM meeting, I need to wake up around 5AM and leave the house at 5:30. My day is over at around 5PM (thankfully I don't work for a workaholic culture start-up), but this still means I'm home by 7:30-8PM most days. I'm basically driving 50…

My father traveled for work a few months at a time. It wasn't the best for any of us, especially my mother. Consider the cost of those lost years. Even if you can retire early it's a season you'll never be able to share with them.

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

#173

Post by bradlys »

Apocryphon wrote: post #165
bradlys wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what? That's the standard work environment and the reality for most Americans. This has nothing to do with Google or SFBA then.

Maybe the standard work environment has been wrong and should be changed and WFH is the way to do it.

That's fine - but that's not what I was talking about. I'm specifically saying if you work for Google - you can afford to live closer than a 1 hour commute. (And you can even take the god damn free shuttle where you clock in for the trip even)

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

#174

Post by bradlys »

popinman322 wrote: post #78
bradlys wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you work from 9-6, and commute an hour each way, that basically means you hardly see your kids at all five days out of the week. So live closer to work. Google pays enough for people to do that. The schools are usually better too.

A) There's only so much housing near campus buildings. B) Prices can become extreme near campus buildings because landlords know they can charge exorbitant prices and still find a tenant. C) Moving to a more expensive place impacts you _and_ the rest of your family via shared rent, utilities, etc.. D) Your significant other, if you have one, may not work at the same company. So you may end up shortchanging your spous…

> Prices can become extreme near campus buildings because landlords know they can charge exorbitant prices and still find a tenant.

I'm not advocating for living literally right next to campus. But to say you can't compete is disingenuous. The whole reason Mountain View is so expensive is because there are so many engineers from Google who can afford it.

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

#175

Post by rangoon626 »

akomtu wrote: post #123
lamontcg wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is actually the biggest proof that the big players, including the gov, don't take co2 emissions seriously. If JP Morgan's Dimon is bragging about how he'll pull employees back to offices and the WH pretends to look the other way, it's safe to assume they don't give two shits about the carbon whatever. Real estate prices is what really matters to them.

Yeah.

It’s totally fine to ask everyone to stop eating meat, but millions of Americans running their cars to/from the office everyday? Not a peep.

Our politicians and business class are wholly unserious about this as they were about COVID-19.

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

#176

Post by txtx »

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.

Senior engineers at Google/Facebook (L5) make at minimum $300K, and with stock appreciation / refreshers $500K+ is not uncommon. Netflix is also well known for paying essentially all of their engineers at least $400K.

Principal engineers (L8) at Google/Facebook make around $1M a year, and $1.5-2M is not unheard of.

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

#177

Post by almost_usual »

bradlys wrote: post #170
ryandrake wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're living in a dream world if you think $600K household is the norm in Silicon valley, even for FAANG employees. We are talking about a small percentage of employees (1. those with FAANG spouses) out of a small percentage of employees (2. top leveled, say Google L6+) out of a small percentage of employees (3. engineers) out of a small percentage of companies (4. FAANG). The rest of us, who are not 1 AND 2 AND 3 A…

> You're living in a dream world if you think $600K household is the norm in Silicon valley, even for FAANG employees. For married couples above 30 with one high TC earner - it's extremely common. You're not marrying a barista in SF if you work at FAANG. I haven't met anyone who is married, above 30, who also works at FAANG, the spouse can legally work in the country, and the household income is below $500K. I know t…

Half of that TC goes to taxes, then there is childcare, rent, etc while saving. The home is doable but you’re not going to have a competitive offer unless you’ve been saving for a few years assuming you have no debt.

The point is.. going into work is a waste of time most of the time. That’s why a lot of companies are doing flex schedules now.

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

#178

Post by yalogin »

paxys wrote: post #81

Google is saving $1 billion per year because of COVID-19, not because employees are working from home. This is literally mentioned in the article, but the headline is twisted (for clicks no doubt): > During the first quarter, Google parent Alphabet Inc. saved $268 million in expenses from company promotions, travel and entertainment, compared with the same period a year earlier, “primarily as a result of COVID-19,” a…

I guess it will go up a little, but I am willing to bet that a bunch of the cases you mentioned where they had to send people around are now done online. I will be really shocked if the google IO is not an online conference going forward.

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

#179

Post by cobookman »

paxys wrote: post #102
nondeveloper wrote: post #63

It would be interesting if Googlers were presented with this set of options: 1) work from the office with the included perks or 2) work remote and keep the resulting savings to the company as a bonus.

Perks cost a lot less to the employer due to wholesale pricing and the fact that very few employees actually use all of them. Employees opting for the latter option won't get as much as they think.

and taxes. Buy lunch yourself, its on after-tax wages. Employer buys you lunch, it is a tax write off for the employer.

Income tax at the marginal tax rate can reach nearly 40% for some of these workers. So that $10 lunch would require a pay-raise of nearly $17 to break-even.

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

#180

Post by twelve40 »

jly wrote: post #95
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…

This is exactly the way I feel. After working at home for ~13 months now, it will be very hard for me to go back to the office. I have young kids at home and getting to spend extra time with them every day is a huge gift, on top of having no commute. There are some negatives, but I feel just as productive and more engaged.

Great for you! I feel exactly the opposite, I feel trapped in my house, super-ecstatic that the kids are finally in school now and can't wait for the office to open.
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