Peanuts.
Google is saving $1B per year as a result of employees working from home
131–140 of 355 posts
Re: Google is saving $1B per year as a result of employees working from home
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
They've been paying rent on their offices the whole time. If they went permanent WFH they could sell/lease those spaces and probably save billions. Not to mention the cost all the employees have to endure for traveling to work, wear on vehicles, gas, repairs, collisions, insurance, medical payouts due to car accidents, etc. Plus just generally the externalities of higher carbon emissions.
This assumes the presence of enough office demand to replace a Google sized company in the markets they lease in. It’s not clear that this is true. US vacancies are projected to be 19.4% nationally. On top of that, there isn’t exactly another Google-sized employer waiting in the wings over in Mountain View.
With re-zoning this won't be a problem. Just rezone it to residential. or residential/commercial.
Re: Google is saving $1B per year as a result of employees working from home
#133It's hard to quantify the potential loss of productivity or collaboration caused by working from home, though. No way to find out either, unfortunately.
Yes. But arguing around $1B saved won't be easy.
The $1B is investment. It's not bloat or inefficiency. In theory, that $1B that they were not able to invest this past year has a return greater than a billion dollars.
Re: Google is saving $1B per year as a result of employees working from home
#134You know what WFH is way WAY more for efficient and good for? A employees health, wellbeing and happiness! which imho is more important than profits or the company.
Please speak for yourself. This is not true for everyone.
Re: Google is saving $1B per year as a result of employees working from home
#135Google is saving $1 billion per year because of COVID-19, not because employees are working from home. This is literally mentioned in the article, but the headline is twisted (for clicks no doubt): > During the first quarter, Google parent Alphabet Inc. saved $268 million in expenses from company promotions, travel and entertainment, compared with the same period a year earlier, “primarily as a result of COVID-19,” a…
It means all the consulting companies are also going to report better than expected results; no travels, food etc expenses. Clients don’t always reimburse that.
Re: Google is saving $1B per year as a result of employees working from home
#136You know what WFH is way WAY more for efficient and good for? A employees health, wellbeing and happiness! which imho is more important than profits or the company.
That's not a universal opinion. All of the people on my team would prefer to be in the office 2 or 3 days a week. Some people find it's positive for their mental health to see and interact with other people, in person, regularly.
Re: Google is saving $1B per year as a result of employees working from home
#137Google may save $1B this year on the P&L, but I can assure you that a large cohort of employees are vastly less effective (especially parents!). Time will tell how wfh pans out in terms of long-term enterprise value creation, after confounding variables (i.e. COVID) are removed. Source: A lot of my Googler friends are itching to get back into the office -- whether parents or people whose social lives centered around…
I'm a parent, who does WFH, and definitely disagree about the preferability of office work. Sure my kids will occasionally pop their heads in the door to say hello. I guess that's an occasional distraction, which has some small productivity cost. You know what hurts productivity more? The soul-crushing experience of missing out on watching your kids grow up because you're spending all day in an office or commuting. I…
I couldn't agree with you more!
Re: Google is saving $1B per year as a result of employees working from home
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
They've been paying rent on their offices the whole time. If they went permanent WFH they could sell/lease those spaces and probably save billions. Not to mention the cost all the employees have to endure for traveling to work, wear on vehicles, gas, repairs, collisions, insurance, medical payouts due to car accidents, etc. Plus just generally the externalities of higher carbon emissions.
Once an employee has built a report with their team, knows their roll, is fully trained, properly equipped, and demonstrates proficiency at their job..... then I'm cool letting staff work from home. I suspect Google has the leadership, supervision, and infrastructure to do all those things at a large scale. Unfortunately for my crew I find brining everyone in is waaaaay more efficient....carbon emissions aside.
That's a model I'd be interested in working under. It's different for everyone, but I find onboarding most efficient in person, and long-term work most enjoyable fully remote.
Re: Google is saving $1B per year as a result of employees working from home
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I have reclaimed 2-3 hours from my time that was previously allocated to earning my paycheck, and I now redirect it towards other activities. Those activities range anywhere from 0-100% on the scale of how relevant they are to me being a better employee. In my case it's more like 2 hours saved, give or take. 50% of that benefits my employer because I'm a morning person and I'm not wasting one of my good hours commu…
Fair response. Can we agree that not everyone gives an hour back to their employer? Or, to go a step further... can we agree that some WFH people give less of their time to their employer relative to their previous in-office time? I doubt that those people will respond here, so any anecdotal evidence is just that - anecdotal. The fact that Google is not continuing with WFH must imply that their leadership's sense is…
I’ll bite :)
If you look at my productive hours for the month, I would say I’m pretty close to 1:1 hours at home vs. hours in an office.
If you look at my hours on a day by day basis? Definitely give less of my hours to my employer than I did when I was in an office.
When I was in an office and I got stuck, I just sat there. I could (and would) half-heartedly work on other things while inspiration tried to strike. But a lot of time, I was just sitting there scribbling on paper trying to be think of solutions to try out.
Since I’ve been WFH (2 and a half years now) if I get stuck, I’ll scribble like before. But I put a time limit on my scribbling. If after 20 minutes I’m not making progress, I’ll go do something - laundry, dust, pull weeds, walk the dog, etc. Sometimes it only takes 10 minutes of not actively thinking to come up with a solution. Other times it might be 2 or 3 hours.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are days where I’ll put in 12 or more hours actively writing code because I’m truly inspired and excited about the solution. When I was in an office, I had hard cut offs because of buses. If I missed my express bus (37 minute commute), I had a 3 bus transfer to get home (2 hour 37 minute commute - yes. I could have done an Uber/Lyft. But didn’t want to pay $40+ for a ride). So I had an alarm set. When that alarm went off, I’d leave regardless of where I was in solving a problem.
So yes. day to day - I “give” less time to my employer. But for the month and actual output, I’m about the same.
N=1 :)
Re: Google is saving $1B per year as a result of employees working from home
#140Google may save $1B this year on the P&L, but I can assure you that a large cohort of employees are vastly less effective (especially parents!). Time will tell how wfh pans out in terms of long-term enterprise value creation, after confounding variables (i.e. COVID) are removed. Source: A lot of my Googler friends are itching to get back into the office -- whether parents or people whose social lives centered around…
I'm a parent, who does WFH, and definitely disagree about the preferability of office work. Sure my kids will occasionally pop their heads in the door to say hello. I guess that's an occasional distraction, which has some small productivity cost. You know what hurts productivity more? The soul-crushing experience of missing out on watching your kids grow up because you're spending all day in an office or commuting. I…
Even when talking about the negative effects of commuting on you and your kids, you frame it in terms of the productivity impact on your employer. Man, talk about Stockholm syndrome.
Productivity is not the end all be all. It's ok to look out for yourself.