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

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#261

Post by mgkimsal » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:42 PM UTC

chitowneats wrote: post #221

ashtonkem wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also awful timing. After what, 18 months of productive WFH now they want to cut salary?

If Google felt that WFH had no negative effect on productivity, they could go the route of Twitter and others. The C-level clearly disagrees that this arrangement is ideal for the company, and are disincentivizing it with pay cuts.

maybe it's OK in the short term - they can keep the lights on keep current initiatives going - but it might have an impact on the process for developing new strategic initiatives. people can be 'productive' in one sense, but it might still be in the interest of the company to have some class of workers 'on site' vs WFH as a default.

I'm not saying this is definitely the case in google's situation, just... "effect on productivity" is hard to measure, and may have more than one measurement.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#262

Post by jffry » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:42 PM UTC

rexreed wrote: post #238

rattlesnakedave wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say the logic is "We entered this agreement with the understanding that you would be in the office x% of the time. We would like you to return to the office at that original capacity. If you would not like to do so, we need to renegotiate our agreement." Not that I agree with any of this, nor am I sure that any of this is even written, but that's probably what it is. All of these gigs being at will employment cer…

"With the understanding that" is not a legal framework. Anything that's key to the understanding of a contract needs to be in a contract. Implicit "I always thought that" doesn't hold water. If I entered into an employee contract with the understanding that I would be given responsibility of a team or project, even though such an understanding was not in the contract, and then the management decides to take away that…

Ah. "Employment Contracts" are not really a thing in most of the US, at least not like they are in Europe.

Yes, employers will have you sign an official looking employment agreement, which basically serves as documentation that they're currently compensating you at X rate, and that you agree to be bound by specific employer rules (like employee handbooks / policies / etc).

Those are not legally binding contracts. At-will workers can leave at any time and can be fired at any time for any reason or no reason, aside from for specific things protected by law (like organizing a union drive, or reporting sexual harassment)

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#263

Post by ascar » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:42 PM UTC

chitowneats wrote: post #221

ashtonkem wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also awful timing. After what, 18 months of productive WFH now they want to cut salary?

If Google felt that WFH had no negative effect on productivity, they could go the route of Twitter and others. The C-level clearly disagrees that this arrangement is ideal for the company, and are disincentivizing it with pay cuts.

I think people overestimate the short term impact of C-levels in these giant organizations. Google isn't run like a startup anymore. There is an existing compensation structure at place that pays employees differently based on the location they are working in. The HR and legal department has probably a pretty firm stance on assuring these structures are applied fairly and unequivocally. And if the C-suit is presented the options of cutting pay of some or raising pay of many others, we all know what a business would go for.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#264

Post by paulgb » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:42 PM UTC

sdevonoes wrote: post #226

ashtonkem wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also awful timing. After what, 18 months of productive WFH now they want to cut salary?

Why wouldn't they? Any "sane" company out there will cut your salary as soon as they find a good excuse to do so. Working from home VS working from the office is the perfect excuse. Productivity doesn't matter because if you go below the minimum bar, you are lay off.

This might be a good heuristic if we were talking about a factory job, but this is a job at a tech company. Competition for talent is pretty fierce, a good enough reason not to cut someone's salary is that it's likely they can go elsewhere and make what they're making now, plus a signing bonus.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#265

Post by namdnay » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:42 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #253

namdnay wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you remove location-dependent pricing, which location do you align the new single price on? Mountain View? London? Hyderabad?

You don't align the price for remote work to a location. You set it to whatever it takes to get enough qualified people to do the work you need done.

Fair enough, but that basically means no more employees in the US

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#266

Post by abunuwas » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:42 PM UTC

I'm very lucky to be able to work from home in my current contract, and it'll probably continue to be like this for another year if I manage to renew it. However I'm not kidding myself, I know as soon as I land a new contract I'll most likely be required to commute. A lot of people I know are already being required to go to the office some days a week, or will be required to do so from September.

The past year has been one of the most productive times of my life, both at work and outside of work, but I reckon productivity is only one of many variables that most employers take into consideration, and perhaps not the most important. I guess they don't even measure productivity by how much you do, but by how much you cost?

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#267

Post by CydeWeys » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:42 PM UTC

yholio wrote: post #224

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heating and cooling lots of individual homes isn't as efficient as office buildings. I'd love to see math on which one is better for the environment.

Buildings generally lose or gain heat throughout the day, proportional to the indoor-outdoor temperature differential. So a building that maintains livable temperatures for say, 12h a day, will still have those energy leaks when the owner is out, and they would have to compensate in the evening the exact amount of energy lost or gained to get back to comfortable temperatures. So unless your home has such ridiculously…

A home that has AC running half of the day will use a lot less energy in total than one running all day long. There are substantial efficiency losses from heat leaking in, which will be exacerbated by trying to maintain a larger temperature delta 24 hours of each day. A house is not a perfect temperature battery on the scale of hours, far from it.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#268

Post by eru » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:42 PM UTC

bigbillheck wrote: post #245

eru wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the company splurge on executives, and not drive down their wages, too, if that's so easy? Executive cost money, too. They are also employees.

Who do you think decides executive wages?

Directly: executives higher up. And at the highest level, the shareholders. The last is a bit tenuous because shareholder capitalism is more of an aspiration than reality.

But that line of argument could only argue for extravagant CEO pay, not high pay for executive in general. (Especially since CEOs get a lot of their pay in shares, so are incentived to get the shareholders more money; eg by driving lower ranking executives' pay down.)

Indirectly: competition between companies and workers (including executives) determines pay.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#269

Post by sjg007 » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:43 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…

Google owns the buildings.. they bought them outright.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#270

Post by Sharlin » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:43 PM UTC

erinan wrote: post #217

mumblemumble wrote: post #156

> One Google employee, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation, typically commutes to the Seattle office from a nearby county and would likely see their pay cut by about 10% by working from home full-time, according estimates by the company's Work Location Tool launched in June. > The employee was considering remote work but decided to keep going to the office - despite the two-hour commute. This seems…

2-hour commute? I'll take the pay cut anytime, like is too short... (and maybe start looking for another job, easier to do with all that "extra" time)

Yeah, it would be a total no-brainer. Especially given that we're likely talking about a six-figure salary in the first place…