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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

#271

Post by ric2b »

EvilEy3 wrote: post #231
orangecat wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, the point was that the choice of where to live was made before the pandemic sent people to work from home.

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

#272

Post by jeremyvisser »

rym_ wrote: post #250
twelve40 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you think you'll enjoy the office as much if (for simplicity sake) 50% of the people enjoy working from home so much they do not want to return? From my discussions with colleagues much more than 50% hopes to work from home 3+ days a week once this all is over.

Not the O.P., but speaking from experience, yes, a thousand times yes.

Here in Sydney, Australia, both office and WFH are available at my work. I'll have anywhere between 0% and 90% of my team in the office depending on the day or week.

In my experience, even being the only one in the office is a thousand times better than WFH.

Whether teammates are WFH affects me less than whether I'm WFH.

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

#273

Post by moneywoes »

jjav wrote: post #254
txtx wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have a lot of difficulty believing any of these numbers. Source: spouse is management level at G of FAANG. Those numbers don't match up with reality in general. For a few edge cases, sure. Not for most people.

Is levels.fyi inaccurate?

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

#274

Post by amelius »

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…

Also, people might work differently, as there will be different distractions in a post covid world.

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

#275

Post by Mauricebranagh »

squaredisk wrote: post #212
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…

If Google saved that much money and the business didn't see a considerable negative impact (34% increase? Quite the opposite in fact.), then that news should be telling not just for Google, but for every company that previously catered to spoiled employees who jump on an airplane just to have lunch with the customer. Two lies COVID has forcibly flushed out and helped dispel: Lie #1: Remote work, cannot work. Lie #2:…

Collocated teams and physical meetings work far better than trying to do 100% remote.

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

#277

Post by Mauricebranagh »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #256
akomtu wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you read his comments closely, he was specifically talking about investment bankers. He talked about how it was hard to train junior bankers on deal making if not face-to-face. I think he used the term "apprenticeship". Even in the era of unlimited voice calls, emails, and video calls, as I understand, most M&A and IPO deals are still done face-to-face. For the investment bank, many of the employees work in New Yo…

The same "apprenticeship" also applies to tech companies.

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

#278

Post by smueller1234 »

amscanne wrote: post #56
kwertyoowiyop wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Essential” means your boss expects you to.

Interesting. I work at Google and never saw such an expectation (though it’s just my experience). I suspect most travel at large companies is dominated by individuals making decisions about what allows them to be most effective in accomplishing their goals (as long as it’s aligned with company travel policies).

It really depends on your job and location.

I think the "your boss expects/forces you to" interpretation from the grand parent isn't generally what happens (at Google). I haven't seen that at all. It's rather more common that you realize on your own that a certain amount of travel is highly effective for building and maintaining the relationships you need to do your job.

This is extremely strongly correlated with your distance from HQ and with the seniority of your position in the company.

For what it's worth, I hold a reasonably senior role (at Google) in EMEA and I'm living off of the relationships I built in the two years prior to the pandemic. I traveled nearly 25% of the time then. Ask your nearest director+ in EMEA engineering and they'll recognize this at least in principle. This is likely to be very similar in other companies that are globally distributed but with a strong epicenter somewhere. I don't think it's particularly Google specific except in that Google engineering isn't very top down/command-and-control, so relationships in a complex org are an even more important tool for getting things done than they would be in a more hierarchical environment.

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

#279

Post by Mauricebranagh »

yitchelle wrote: post #276

Will the company help is funding the home office? I am not talking about the computer equipment here. I am talking about internet cost, a portion of the mortgage / rent, a cost of the furniture etc. AFAIK, these are funded personally.

Exactly a few years ago I was doing dialysis at home (UK) and the supplies took up most of the dining room we got a 25% rebate on our council tax.

So should employers start paying a proportion of employees property tax - and that's not counting the fact that employers are using my home network and my BB connection.

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

#280

Post by ppf »

dcolkitt wrote: post #61
beambot wrote: post #4

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…

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…

I have two very young children, one of whom was born during 2020. I can tell you that raising kids that young, with both parents trying to WFH, and the lack of any support of any kind at all thanks to Covid restrictions, was a soul-crushing experience that I do not ever want to repeat. I do appreciate that my experience is a little unique, though.
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