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Google Employees Secretly Live on Campus to Avoid Paying Rent

finance.yahoo.com

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Re: Google Employees Secretly Live on Campus to Avoid Paying Rent

#11

Post by Raphmedia »

onion2k wrote: post #7
Systemic33 wrote: post #2

Can't Google just setup dormitories? It's halfway on being it's own city, so why not go all out and have cheap living quarters?

And thus, Google becomes The Circle completely. I'm being a bit flippant, but really the last thing Google employees (and every other successful tech businesses to be fair) need is to be more isolated in their ivory towers. Meeting people outside of the tech industry keeps you grounded and stops you forgetting that there are vast numbers of people who aren't so intelligent and happy with massive changes every couple…

If I could save rent by living in my office, I would. Hell, I would have double the income to put in my "let's have fun!" budget.

Re: Google Employees Secretly Live on Campus to Avoid Paying Rent

#12

Post by Systemic33 »

mithras wrote: post #8

maybe change the link to the quora thread? The article adds literally nothing. http://www.quora.com/Which-Googler-holds-the-record-for-livi...

In any normal case i'd agree, but Quora is just a straight out terrible place to share stuff because it's essentially a paywall. (paying with money or a registration doesn't really make a difference for this situation).

Re: Google Employees Secretly Live on Campus to Avoid Paying Rent

#13

Post by lablurker »

I did this for a couple of months at my university, having failed to secure accommodation at the end of a rental period. Slept variously in an electron microscopy suite, a darkroom, and a rarely used bathroom. Wasn't too bad, though there was the omnipresent fear of campus security twigging on. As this was in London I saved quite a decent wad of cash in rent. Wouldn't do it again though unless I was particularly desperate.

Re: Google Employees Secretly Live on Campus to Avoid Paying Rent

#14

Post by Pxtl »

Systemic33 wrote: post #2

Can't Google just setup dormitories? It's halfway on being it's own city, so why not go all out and have cheap living quarters?

Or they could just move out of the polically dysfunctional SF-bay area.

Seriously, why do so many companies put up with the broken real-estate market and government that completely fails to manage it?

Re: Google Employees Secretly Live on Campus to Avoid Paying Rent

#15

Post by electrograv »

Silicon Valley: Where highly paid ($100-$200k+) engineers sleep in cars to save money on obscenely expensive rent.

Honestly, recently moving to Seattle has been refreshing to me in this regard. I find Seattle tech industry pay no less than SF, plus no state income tax, and for the same rent as SF you can practically live like a king/queen here.

I wonder how long the housing situation in SV can keep up until everything collapses under its own weight?

Re: Google Employees Secretly Live on Campus to Avoid Paying Rent

#16

Post by VLM »

Well, the author has clearly never car camped or worked operations before:

"It's not clear what the Googlers like Discoe did when they had to go to the bathroom at night."

They went to the bathroom of course, just like you would in the day. Its not like toilets are solar powered and don't work after dark. If you work there and have an ID and walk past the guard at 2am and walk past leaving a couple minutes later, they simply don't care. "He must have been called in to reboot a server or something". Also although I am a morning person the world has no shortage of night persons and my experience in a 300 person building is I never heard of it being empty although it could happen, and at a 800 person building I don't think we ever, not even on holidays at 3am, dropped below six people.

Re: Google Employees Secretly Live on Campus to Avoid Paying Rent

#17

Post by jadc »

sounds wrote: post #6

It sounds like Google will be making some rapid changes to their security policy. Part of me feels bad for the guys who just got ratted out. Homelessness is a pretty disorienting thing. Part of me feels like this is just another way of saying that there's a bay area housing shortage...

I wouldn't really compare homelessness to being employed at Google and choosing to sleep in the parking lot.

Re: Google Employees Secretly Live on Campus to Avoid Paying Rent

#18

Post by tehwebguy »

Systemic33 wrote: post #12
mithras wrote: post #8

maybe change the link to the quora thread? The article adds literally nothing. http://www.quora.com/Which-Googler-holds-the-record-for-livi...

In any normal case i'd agree, but Quora is just a straight out terrible place to share stuff because it's essentially a paywall. (paying with money or a registration doesn't really make a difference for this situation).

Woah it seems that it no longer requires a registration to see all of the answers. Not sure when this changed.
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