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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

#61

Post by VLM »

Symmetry wrote: post #24
blahpro wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that this could be counter-productive. 24/7 immersion in an employer-owned and operated environment doesn't sound healthy from a work/life balance perspective.

Not in the long term certainly, but there are lots of people in the military, on cargo ships, etc who do that. Back when I was working at Lincoln Labs I considered going out to Kwajalein for a year.

Antarctica

If you're looking for a moderately entertaining light read try a book called "Big Dead Place". The author's life is pretty dark but the book is funny light reading.

Its basically the movie "old school" with a lot of snow and a screwed up male/female ratio, combined with a bit of Dilberts PHB is both your boss and your landlord with predictable results. His writing is more or less reportedly true with the obvious exception of the "blind men talking about the elephant" issue where you get 1000 people and none of them have the whole total story and experiences will vary.

The author had a pretty interesting blog which responds with a blank white page today. Its worth your time to read it off the wayback machine. The books name is big dead place so search for bigdeadplace.com

He eventually got banned from working in Antarctica because of his writings, and then suicided, shotgun from what I heard. Long term addiction to alcohol didn't help much.

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

#62

Post by jiggy2011 »

Symmetry wrote: post #24
blahpro wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that this could be counter-productive. 24/7 immersion in an employer-owned and operated environment doesn't sound healthy from a work/life balance perspective.

Not in the long term certainly, but there are lots of people in the military, on cargo ships, etc who do that. Back when I was working at Lincoln Labs I considered going out to Kwajalein for a year.

People on cargo ships or oil rigs still usually have regular homes that they live in when they are not working which is often for weeks or months at a time. Google uses it's employees year round.

I wonder if this might be a good solution for the software industry to avoid burnout. Have people live in SV for designated "crunch" periods where you work for 70 hours a week for 2 months, then go home to somewhere cheaper for 2.

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

#63

Post by falcolas »

blazespin wrote: post #50
bsaul wrote: post #9

Does anyone else feels like we're really getting towards the cyberpunk universe ? with corporations that completely own the life of their employees by providing them with everything, and a violent lawless and miserable outside world. And as always, it all started with the best intentions.

Tech folks tend to live in their heads. Houses, etc, is just boring distractions.

As a techie who just recently completed purchasing a house, I disagree. It's a reminder that there's more to life than what's in my head, and it's something I can call my own (well, mine and the banks).

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

#64

Post by jadc »

sounds wrote: post #29
jadc wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Of course not. Have you been homeless before? I've been homeless. Long story. If you've been sleeping in a parking lot and now security has caught on, you're homeless. Are you judging them because they happen to have some money saved up?

Good for you for being able to have more compassion towards these people than I do :)

People save on rent all the time: crashing at friends, moving in with their BF/GF, moving back with their parents, etc... so this is nothing new and I have no problem with the money saving aspect. I just don't equate it with homelessness.

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

#66

Post by VLM »

arrrg wrote: post #38
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?

Hah, it seems worker housing (from the times of the industrial revolution, when many employers attempted to control every aspect of their employees’ lives) is coming back.

That "tradition" actually goes back a little further to cotton operations in the deep south, and for that matter feudalism in the middle ages.

That tradition is still at least minimally present for Ag workers today.

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

#67

Post by morganvachon »

Raphmedia wrote: post #11
onion2k wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But wouldn't you eventually get burnt out? For me at least, going home every day is my release from the pressure and stress of work.

I even have a real-world example: My boss is getting divorced, and as the president of our small company, he has the alarm codes and keys to every door. We have a full kitchen, multiple bathrooms, etc. The only thing we don't have is a shower. He figured he could sleep on the conference room couch, shower at the gym since he goes there every day before work anyway, and wouldn't have to pay rent in an apartment while making house payments too. That lasted about a week before he became so sick of being in the building he was ready to quit. He's now living in a hotel while he searches for an apartment.

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

#68

Post by netcan »

electrograv wrote: post #15

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 everythin…

Rent in central cities is one of the unintuitive outcomes of the modern economy. SV might be an extreme example, but it isn't the only one. The world is far more globalized. People work with clients, customers, and coworkers mostly through the internet, even if they are in the same building or city.

Google's a good example. They have offices all over. They have clients everywhere.

Common sense would dictate that employees would be easier to hire for the same cost elsewhere where that salary affords a better lifestyle. With all due respect to SF (last time I visited I was 12), there are lots of places where a $140k salary will get you the best schools for kids, entertainment for the adults and palatial digs. It is quite literally like doubling you salary to take it someplace else, even within the US.

I wonder what the reasons are. Obviously clusters matter. There's the tautology that everyone wants what everyone wants. Being someplace vibrant and affluent is valuable to the resident & employees (or resident-employees). I also think that nominal salaries are important to people's decision making. A 25% pay cut from relocation resulting in a 10% cut in after tax salary but a real measurable and provable increase in purchasing power still feels like a 25% pay cut.

Interesting.

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

#69

Post by mccr8 »

johan_larson wrote: post #48
electrograv wrote: post #15

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 everythin…

It's weird. There has always been some water-cooler talk among the engineers about how it would be possible to live on campus. But these journalists actually found people who've done it. And they're engineers; most of our speculation focused on interns.

This isn't really journalists, this is Yahoo reposting Business Insider reposting some people's claims from Quora.

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

#70

Post by simonswords82 »

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...

I've started to see a trend, first on Forbes and now here, where "journalists" are scraping Quora for content rather than creating fresh copy. I get that it's tempting but c'mon.
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