Google employees who work from home could lose money • Hacker News Board

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#131

Post by JumpCrisscross » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:14 PM UTC

shmatt wrote: post #103

dsr_ wrote: post #44

Class A office space in Manhattan is about $70/sqft, and the average office employee gets 150 sqft allocated (desk, hallway, conference room, supply closets...) Google is probably 170. That's $11900 annually that they save by not having an employee take up office space. No, it's not fungible on a small scale, but it's certainly fungible on a large scale: reduce your office needs by 100 people and you can rearrange de…

Manhattan leases also famously start at 10 year terms as the shortest. With all the secrets going around your average FAANG office, no way would any company sublease a partial floor. Maybe an entire floor, but that creates more issues with the complicated separate lobby and elevator systems they previously built These companies could maybe cut the costs in a few years, maybe in 10-15. Most of these employees working…

> no way would any company sublease a partial floor

Why not? Turn it into a co-working space. Lease it to a start-up and put up a divider.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#132

Post by foobar2021 » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:14 PM UTC

Jach wrote: post #86

bsagdiyev wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. When I left California I fully expected my pay to get reduced, I’m not going to blind myself and think that it wouldn’t happen because of my move to a lower cost of living area. I’m lucky that that wasn’t the case but it was a pleasant surprise more than something I expected and demanded.

I still think everyone should fight against it if they think it's going to happen, whether they've come to terms with it or not. I heard about an employee who moved to Canada, got her manager to agree to no pay cut, but HR went over the manager's head. Certainly a rage-quit moment if it had been me, though of course international concerns were a factor. Admittedly it's easier to fight if your move is domestic. "Cost…

If you replace “cost of living” with “living wage” the mainstream opinion very much wants your salary to be the company’s business. Why this isn’t owned by some level (state, local) of government I have no idea.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#133

Post by namdnay » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:14 PM UTC

gmadsen wrote: post #125

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good thing, it's not healthy to have all your wealth in one small region of a country.

wait till the even wider proliferation of offshoring of remote technical roles. The wealth will be even more concentrated, except only the executives, while the workers will have even less

why even less? remote work has been a great boost for lots of workers. I see the effect of it here in Europe, in the past year average hire salaries have gone up by at least 10% due to the competition with fully remote orgs

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#134

Post by andrew_ » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:14 PM UTC

diogofranco wrote: post #100

rexreed wrote: post #71

Does this mean employee agreements are up for renegotiating? Salary / compensation for work is the key element to an employee agreement. If employers can change compensation at will without employee consent then the employee agreement is truly meaningless and simply a tool for the employer to wield against the employee. I'd imagine a few employee lawsuits on breach of contract that will test that.

Location is in the contract, you sign a new offer in order to move

Unless it isn't, as is the case with every offer I've signed since 2009 when I went full time remote.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#135

Post by midnightcity » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:14 PM UTC

pimterry wrote: post #127

Interestingly, in Spain this would be illegal. After a law introduced last year, long-term remote working (>30% of hours outside the office for 3+ months) now requires the worker and company to agree written terms (who'll pay for costs, how much remote is allowed, what worker monitoring will be used, if any, on what schedule does the worker have to be available, etc). As part of that, there's legal protections agains…

I wonder at what point it becomes cheaper to simply establish an office in a different jurisdiction for the purpose of hiring remote workers...

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#136

Post by chrisco255 » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:15 PM UTC

gmadsen wrote: post #125

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good thing, it's not healthy to have all your wealth in one small region of a country.

wait till the even wider proliferation of offshoring of remote technical roles. The wealth will be even more concentrated, except only the executives, while the workers will have even less

Yeah been waiting for that to happen for the past 20 years...

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#137

Post by UncleMeat » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:15 PM UTC

jensensbutton wrote: post #43

Companies were never paying based on value provided. They pay market rate which, until recently, was artificially limited to a few expensive markets. With remote, these companies are now able to do what every other large labor driven industry has done and lower their costs by finding labor in cheaper markets.

And it makes it plain to see that we need collective action. All the people who say "I bring a ton of value to a company and therefore can negotiate to capture that value" are fooling themselves, because no company willingly pays people based on the value they provide.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#138

Post by ransom1538 » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:15 PM UTC

dsr_ wrote: post #44

Class A office space in Manhattan is about $70/sqft, and the average office employee gets 150 sqft allocated (desk, hallway, conference room, supply closets...) Google is probably 170. That's $11900 annually that they save by not having an employee take up office space. No, it's not fungible on a small scale, but it's certainly fungible on a large scale: reduce your office needs by 100 people and you can rearrange de…

"Google is probably 170. That's $11900 annually that they save by not having an employee take up office space."

They are locked into leases and/or have purchased the buildings outright. So the cost is sunk. This is why google is upset and will take salary away from remote workers.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#139

Post by newsclues » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:15 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #60

dsr_ wrote: post #44

Class A office space in Manhattan is about $70/sqft, and the average office employee gets 150 sqft allocated (desk, hallway, conference room, supply closets...) Google is probably 170. That's $11900 annually that they save by not having an employee take up office space. No, it's not fungible on a small scale, but it's certainly fungible on a large scale: reduce your office needs by 100 people and you can rearrange de…

> If Googlers had any collective bargaining power, they wouldn't be getting salary reductions: they would be getting extra expense money for desks, chairs, and ISP upgrades. Since Google already pays the most, where do you threaten to leave to while bargaining?

The threat of starting a new Google?

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#140

Post by Raphael_Amiard » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:15 PM UTC

boplicity wrote: post #99

The cost of commuting on the environment is extremely high. We should be offering incentives to companies to switch to remote work. If 20% of jobs permanently switched to remote, the impact on carbon emissions would be immediate, and extremely positive.

I'm used to the conversation in here being extremely US-centric, but realize that this is much less true for European cities with good public transportation. I haven't ever used a car to go to work in my life.

I'm also very concerned about this better world where people stay home to save the planet. The common level of social interactions in the modern world is already low enough in my opinion.

EDIT: It rarely happens this way but in retrospect I feel my comment is way too tame. You think your problem is going to work. The problem is the whole american lifestyle where you live in an individual house and need a car to do anything, your house is an ecological disaster in terms of how much energy you need to keep it warm/cold, and even bringing food to your house will incur a large carbon footprint.

I know the system is hard to changes, but some people need to see the bigger picture, even if you can't do anything about it yet.