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.
I do wonder that, if tech companies ( other than Google ) decide to continue WFH, will they pay a portion of their employees rent, internet, and furniture for their office space?
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.
Companies compete with each other for the best talent, and often lose. They could always stop spending on recruiting and hire anyone from the pile of resumes, but they aren’t looking for just anyone.
One could argue that the money spent sending people to career fairs would be better spent on bigger signing bonuses. I assume Google uses data to make these decisions, but it could just be keeping up with the Joneses.
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)
You could also afford to set fire to a stack of $100 bills. That does not mean you find it a sensible thing to do.
Google may save $1B this year on the P&L, but I can assure you that a large cohort of employees are vastly less effective (especially parents!). Time will tell how wfh pans out in terms of long-term enterprise value creation, after confounding variables (i.e. COVID) are removed. Source: A lot of my Googler friends are itching to get back into the office -- whether parents or people whose social lives centered around…
That's just nonsense. Australia has had one of the harshest lockdown measures in the developed world and we're quite Corona free at the moment. We're living in our own little bubble. Everyone who could, had to work from home during the lockdown. Everyone else was supported by a salary equivalent payment from the govt. Now, people are back at work. But when it can be done from home, most people are still choosing to do it that way. And we're haven't lost any productivity. Rather gained more due to savings in commuting time. Also, as our lives get easier, we're more grateful because of it and the overall positivity definitely helps with productivity. I've been lucky to work for a company that promotes this more. Even after everything is normal, no one is being forced to come back to the office. Because it doesn't matter. We get the same thing done more effectively. You're right about one thing. I'm also itching to get back to work. I do that once or twice a week. Mostly to catch up with mates and grab some lunch together.
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.
Once an employee has built a report with their team, knows their roll, is fully trained, properly equipped, and demonstrates proficiency at their job..... then I'm cool letting staff work from home. I suspect Google has the leadership, supervision, and infrastructure to do all those things at a large scale. Unfortunately for my crew I find brining everyone in is waaaaay more efficient....carbon emissions aside.
> Once an employee has built a report with their team, knows their roll
Did you mean "rapport" and "role"? Because that sentence was a bit confusing.
Always remember: numbers without context are meaningless. Google had 180bn revenue in 2020. In normal circumstances , even with much more WFH, they'd still pay for regular company get togethers. They'd pay for more satellite offices. They'd pay for conferences because making cross industry connections and promotion is important. These savings don't mean much. Even more so if they lead to a potential dip in efficiency…
two. billion. dollars. per. day. or $23,000 USD per second.
Mostly from advertising, some 87%. Funny to think in their initial whitepaper, Brin and Page were heavily arguing against paid (sponsored) ads in search result of a search engine, as it would skew the results to the point where people would stop using it.
> because of Prop 13 those people wouldn't be paying property tax in 10 years I'm not sure what you mean. Prop 13 just caps the annual increase at 2%. I've lived in California and owned property here for 30 years. I pay property taxes.
If the annual increase is capped at 2% and inflation is >2% then the value reaped by property tax will eventually go to 0. Similar to how if you rent the same place for long enough and it's rent controlled your rent effectively gets cheaper even though it's going up.
and if inflation is under 2% and the city always increases by the maximum of 2%, then eventually the value of the property tax paid will be infinite, right?
How is that analysis useful?
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.
Unsolicited resumes are the most noisy channel of all. TBF I'm somewhat surprised it is even cost effective to keep reading them. But, send an engineer to spend an hour talking at a university and you get a bunch of very promising leads every time.
Source: I've been an interviewer in Google for a number of years and talked at a university at some point.
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…
> 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. Surely not a bigger productivity cost than a coworker doing the same thing, though.
I would even say a less, my kids will often have a specific ask 'can I watch some TV' where I can reply 'yes/no/later/that's really good/bad' and then its done. A co-worker will sometimes not even have a specific ask, but are instead looking for some idle chat.