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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

#231

Post by EvilEy3 »

orangecat wrote: post #106
Cookingboy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can assure you all these "assurances" are just based off personal preferences and anecdotal stories. There are pros and cons with office work and WFH, and some people prefer one over the other. A full remote arrangement isn't for everyone, despite how the overwhelming number of introverts on HackerNews paint it as the objectively the best way going forward for all companies.

Heck, I'm an introvert and I recognize that the increased friction in communication has a significant negative impact. I'm also a bit put off by the "it's so great not having a commute" people. Commuting does suck, but they voluntarily signed up for it. Meanwhile those that chose tiny apartments near their offices didn't sign up for spending all day in cramped quarters trying to work from a couch.

> Meanwhile those that chose tiny apartments near their offices didn't sign up for spending all day in cramped quarters trying to work from a couch.

They literally did. I don't see any difference between choosing living an hour from work or choosing living in a cramped up flat near work.

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

#232

Post by EvilEy3 »

varispeed wrote: post #208

I can bet that $1B won't get distributed through salaries, but rather some managers get hefty bonuses and the rest will be reinvested into perfecting manipulation techniques to make us buy products we don't need or want.

Why should it be distributed through salaries? Making an extra is a one time thing.

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

#233

Post by EvilEy3 »

aerosmile wrote: post #74

A lot of people bring up the issue of commuting, which I think is a bit thorny. Here's a quote from one of the comments below: > I feel vastly more productive with not spending 2-3 hours every day commuting Your commute is not your company's business. They might try to make it easier by implementing shuttles and flexible work schedules, but at the end of the day you signed up for this commute. If you work for Google,…

You're making it sound like it is my problem that I have to commute. That is as much my problem as it is company's problem.

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

#234

Post by paganel »

txtx wrote: post #176
astrange wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Those golden cages at the FAANG companies are getting brighter, last time I had looked at their engineers' compensation they were around the 200-300k mark, and that was seen as high (around 2015-2016, even though I could be mistaken by a year or two). I guess monopoly power does indeed pay.

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

#235

Post by watwut »

Cookingboy wrote: post #22
jaegerpicker wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can assure you that a much larger cohort of employees are vastly more effective. No commute alone is a MASSIVE gain.

I can assure you all these "assurances" are just based off personal preferences and anecdotal stories. There are pros and cons with office work and WFH, and some people prefer one over the other. A full remote arrangement isn't for everyone, despite how the overwhelming number of introverts on HackerNews paint it as the objectively the best way going forward for all companies.

> despite how the overwhelming number of introverts on HackerNews paint it as the objectively the best way going forward for all companies.

Hacker news is no more pro work from home then people IRL I see.

And division among people I know in person is not introvert/extrovert at all. It is more about living arrangement and family. Single people living alone want to go to work. Those who have family and expect their partners to do all childcare, prefer to go to work and socialize with colleagues after work. Those who have kids and want to be present fathers or have partners with equally important work want to work from home.

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

#237

Post by BiteCode_dev »

SilverRed wrote: post #204
quantumsequoia wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is one of the most sought after companies, but this is due to them actively advertising Google as a great place to work. Actually talking to someone who works at Google makes it more real and attainable in candidates minds and reinforces Google as a desirable place to work If Google were to stop attending, they risk newer generations of engineers shifting their perspective on Google, especially these days when…

Sounds about right. The OP sounds like "Why does coke advertise their product so much when they are the most well known product in existence" Because that status will decline without advertising.

I wonder if this is not a good argument to actually make all kind of advertising illegal.

There is no way that ensuring huge entities with enormous capital are able sustain their dominant position thanks to flushing cash at ads is healthy.

I've yet to see a situation where advertising was better than word of mouth, personal experience or expert feedback.

It seems it's all gain for them, no gain for us.

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

#239

Post by f6v »

bpodgursky wrote: post #151
guyzero wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If AWS is coming to my office to do a "free architecture evaluation" and GCP doesn't, guess which one I'll choose.

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

#240

Post by jjav »

EvilEy3 wrote: post #223
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.

How much cost they will endure when their employees start getting insane from all the zoom meetings and working with a monitor instead of a real person?

> working with a monitor instead of a real person

Pre and post pandemic I'm still communicating with coworkers via email and slack, on the monitor. No difference at all.

Well, one difference is I used be able to hear them munch on their snacks a couple cubicles over, but I can do without that part.

Also, erasing the two hour commute, total win.

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