Working from home / remote has had significant effects on collaboration and execution especially for more junior employees. Only a handful of more senior engineers have been more productive from my experience. Additionally, company politics are real and if you work remote, you may miss out on opportunities for growth.
Google employees who work from home could lose money
591–600 of 699 posts
Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money
#592Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Apple didn't build the first smartphone; they made it mass market because the technology (which Apple did not invent) had gotten to where bundling it into a smartphone would provide sufficient value to a consumer to be worth paying for. IIRC, that was already true for business customers before the iPhone. > There were other mass market smartphones even then; what the iphone brought was UX (so kudos for Jobs for hir…
"that was already true for business customers before the iPhone." - Hence my use of the term "mass market" "what the iPhone brought was email and the Web " - So I never mentioned email re: the iPhone, that was supported back in the first smartphone in 92. For the web, I saw an article that mentioned that, but that doesn't jibe with what I remember or can find elsewhere. There were definitely phones that allowed you t…
I remember how I switched almost overnight from consuming Web things and personal email on my trusty laptop to my ipod touch (iPhone without 3g really) and one month in I had almost forgotten I could do it on my laptop.
The Web and mail experience on ipod touch was simply great, not sure I could explain it better than 'just great'. Nothing world shattering, but it seemed the thing was just natural for surfing and emails. And music of course (but heh, ipod). Didn't care about apps, or anything (or plants vs zombie was a great fun time waster). The thing was thin, nice to hold, nice large screen, capacitive keyboard and... So much better than my n900 or my palmshits for Web and personal email. No 3g then! Just WiFi. It was a simple, nice blend.
As soon as I got hooked up on this, next phone-break I bought... A galaxy s2 then stayed android (mostly because iTunes, iTunes and iTunes, which I hated as much as I can hate any software... Talk about learned helplessness...).
The original ipod touch was the best Web terminal at that time, I think.
Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money
#593Earlier quoted context omitted.
The cost of the A/C and janitorial staff is peanuts compared to the money they spent on commercial real estate. If they don’t get ROI, someone is going to be held accountable. If the offices close and the value of commercial real estate plummets there are huge players that are going to be wiped out, with macro-economic ramifications. It’s a perfect example of sunk cost fallacy, but on the scale of billions of dollars…
It's been a while for me but I recall that a significant amount of the real estate already existed. I worked in a number of buildings in MTV, starting before the SGI retrofit. Most were old and had little done to them. There was new construction (mYbe the Zurich office, with Urs' apartment on top?) but way more remodeling. I know they built the housing near moffet but how much other real estate did they really do fro…
Google has something close to $50B in real estate holdings. They announced $7B in real estate spending in 2021. [1]
That press release reads more like a "head of state" spending in key constituent areas for some policy changes needed. Shovels in dirt wins politicians, and Google needs all the help it can get with the looming antitrust issues.
[1] - https://blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/inve...
Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money
#594Earlier quoted context omitted.
The number I saw was 100,000 sqft - it seems like it depends on whether you exclude the smallest Walmarts : )
They have over 3,400 stores at ~180,000sqft. There are three within a short drive from my home. They have ~190 around 40,000sqft. The ~800 mid-sized "discount" stores are mostly closing and don't have groceries, they're ~100,000sqft. Big American stores are absolutely massive , and they're all over the place. https://247wallst.com/retail/2014/03/22/walmart-now-has-six-... You mentioned you had like one of these massi…
I'll update the size of American supermarkets in my mind by 100% : )
There are broadly 5 big shops within comfortable distance of me - one of them is between 150-200,000 sqft [1], so I guess a mid-sized American store. But I've only been to one of them, when I needed some electronics, because I don't see the point otherwise. Presumably other people do or the shops wouldn't exist...
Unrelated - does "town" mean something different in American English? To me it means a place bigger than a village but smaller than a city. The city I'm in has 300k - 1m people in it, depending on how you draw the boundaries.
[1]: its car park extends onto its roof which I guess might be amusing to an American. Land is expensive here.
Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money
#595Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This makes no sense. It makes a ton of sense. Salaries are based on supply/demand, like any other marketplace. Workers in LCOL areas have less options for high pay so you can offer them less money and they'll likely accept it.
The point is that when it comes to full time remote work workers in LCOL areas and workers in HCOL areas are in the same marketplace selling the same product.
And the counterpoint is that there are few enough companies offering sv salaries to remote workers in Topeka that it doesn't matter.
Put another way, if you live in X location your job market is local jobs + remote jobs. The remote jobs are constant everywhere, so there's a relatively high demand. Unless the remote market absolutely dominates the local market, remote jobs can still compete with local ones.
Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money
#596> One Google employee ..would likely see their pay cut by about 10% by working from home full-time > The employee was considering remote work but decided to keep going to the office - despite the two-hour commute. 10% paycut in place of 10 hours of commute seems a good deal to me.
It's not a trade. The worker just loses.
That depends on how you value your freetime.
I once went from a 30min commute to 2 min. Just that small amount of freetime (1 hour basically) let me get a lot more things done in a day. I could also realistically 'go home for lunch'. Which cut my lunch expenses way down.
Now up front if you had said I am going to cut your pay by 10% because of that. I would not have done it. But after having done it I would deeply consider it.
Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money
#597Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the case of the USA, people staying home to work might have a positive impact on social interaction in the long run. I'm pretty sure a large part of the reason why Americans are so lonely compared to the rest of the world is that the suburban bedroom community model physically divides us and makes it much more difficult to get to know one's neighbors. By the time you get home from work at 6:30 in the evening, it's…
Interesting. I'm symmetrically not used to think about those problems from an american perspective. Thanks for the insight. I can indeed see a world where working from home might in the short term infuse some life in local life, from neighbors to associations etc.. So maybe it's actually a positive change!
It's definitely true for me. Working from home, I see my neighbors before work, during lunch, and after work much more than when they were going to the office. Especially, during lunch time, I see a lot more people that actually live near me out and about instead of people that happen to work in my general area that I'd typically never see after work or on the weekend since they'd go back to their own neighborhoods.
Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money
#598> 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…
> would likely see their pay cut by about 10%
I assume they're not taking RSUs away, so the cut is only to base salary (maybe bonus also?). Since RSUs tend to be over 50% of total comp, that's less than 5% cut in reality.
I can't relate to how one wouldn't take a 5% pay cut to eliminate a two hour commute! Heck I'd take a full 10% cut to avoid commuting two hours a day. At a typical goog salary one doesn't even notice 5% or 10%, but two hour commute sure changes life.
Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money
#599> 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…
You can do things while you’re in Seattle other than than just go to the office and then straight back home.
Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money
#600Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Apple didn't build the first smartphone; they made it mass market because the technology (which Apple did not invent) had gotten to where bundling it into a smartphone would provide sufficient value to a consumer to be worth paying for. IIRC, that was already true for business customers before the iPhone. > There were other mass market smartphones even then; what the iphone brought was UX (so kudos for Jobs for hir…
"that was already true for business customers before the iPhone." - Hence my use of the term "mass market" "what the iPhone brought was email and the Web " - So I never mentioned email re: the iPhone, that was supported back in the first smartphone in 92. For the web, I saw an article that mentioned that, but that doesn't jibe with what I remember or can find elsewhere. There were definitely phones that allowed you t…
> There were definitely phones that allowed you to browse the web, as early as the Nokia 9000 Communicator. I think it was the first to have 'unlimited' internet plans due to their partnership with AT&T, but I'm not sure that's nearly as convincing an innovation as 'the web'. Maybe the fact that mobile Safari had a look and feel similar to desktop Safari.
My understanding is that "the web" on mobile phones was crippled and unappealing prior to the iPhone. Sure you could "use" it, but most people didn't want to. In 2007 the web was on the desktop, and the iPhone bringing a desktop-like experience to a phone was a game-changer.