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Google asks some employees to share desks amid office downsizing

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Re: Google asks some employees to share desks amid office downsizing

#161

Post by leros »

roflyear wrote: post #98
moffkalast wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google still has interesting problems to work on? I thought they just printed money with adsense and launched projects just so they could cancel them 2 weeks later. /s

I think he's saying they don't have interesting problems to work on.

Companies like Google have a unique problem. They attract the best engineers, but they still have lots of boring work to be done. So they end up hiring brilliant engineers only to have them work on uninteresting things like financial reports. My company created a whole separate job title which basically equates to "less skilled and lower payed developer" so we can hire more average engineers to do that kind of work without diluting our quality of engineers.

Re: Google asks some employees to share desks amid office downsizing

#162

Post by leros »

outworlder wrote: post #112
shmatt wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd work from a toilet stall for a Google L6 comp band I doubt any Googlers actually care about this stuff

> I'd work from a toilet stall for a Google L6 comp band For maybe a quarter, until your brain adapts. Once you have your needs met, there's diminishing returns. You can still be miserable while getting a fat check.

Plus you'd have Google on your resume, so now you get a job just about anywhere, so you can leave Google for similar pay at a better company.

Re: Google asks some employees to share desks amid office downsizing

#163

Post by ryandrake »

pram wrote: post #35

Remember how all those Gen X movies depicted cubicles as the embodiment of the soul crushing rat race. If only we still had it that good!

Sam Lowry's office at Information Retrieval[1] was supposed to depict a dystopianly-terrible office setup, but these day's I'd kill for a workspace like that. That's how bad offices are in 2023.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS5WLkb_Cxk

Re: Google asks some employees to share desks amid office downsizing

#165

Post by varelse »

CydeWeys wrote: post #65
shmatt wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd work from a toilet stall for a Google L6 comp band I doubt any Googlers actually care about this stuff

I'm a Googler who very much cares about having my own desk. I hate WFH because I find it to be miserable, strongly prefer WFO, and this would make WFO miserable too. I'm not gonna be miserable for 8 hours every day for any amount of money.

[dead]

Re: Google asks some employees to share desks amid office downsizing

#166

Post by rootusrootus »

Laaas wrote: post #93
rootusrootus wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would have to be timed so each employee got equal stool time. IIRC standing all day isn't necessarily healthier than sitting all day. You want to alternate.

That would be incentivised with this system, no? Employees would fight the other off the stool constantly, to get their share of sitting.

And perhaps get a little exercise in the process. Good point.

Re: Google asks some employees to share desks amid office downsizing

#167

Post by Panini_Jones »

scarface74 wrote: post #136
haunter wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP but WFH to me is like living at my workplace. There is no boundary anymore between work and home. This where I work, this is where I live. This gone with WFH. I much rather prefer the physical separation of office and my private home.

I have (had) a separate room in my house for my office. I go in in the morning and i close the door in the evening and don’t go back in there.

In HCOL cities in the USA, it can be tough to get a setup like this.

One may suggest to move cities, but my community is my friends in the city I live in. One may suggest getting new friends in a new city, but that's a tough and long process - friendships can take years to build, especially if I'm isolated and working from home.

I could move further out of the city, but now I'm commuting 1hr+ one-way to see my friends every day. The very commute that WFH was trying to get rid of.

Re: Google asks some employees to share desks amid office downsizing

#168

Post by timeless102 »

Ancalagon wrote: post #126
ren_engineer wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

whole thing makes no sense, just feels like leadership is flailing. Is RTO just sunk cost fallacy due to these big companies having spent billions on real estate and fancy buildings? There seems to be minimal benefits to mandating it, it shrinks your talent pool, makes employees less efficient due to commute, forces you to pay more in tech hubs, and makes you spend more on office stuff. The only benefit is the comple…

Makes perfect sense if they’re trying to downsize without paying severance/unemployment.

If they don't come it and don't resign themselves, then I assume google would fire them in which case they would get severance? Is that how it works? It's only an issue if the people who wfh resign then they would not get severance/unemployment?

Re: Google asks some employees to share desks amid office downsizing

#169

Post by scarface74 »

Panini_Jones wrote: post #167
scarface74 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have (had) a separate room in my house for my office. I go in in the morning and i close the door in the evening and don’t go back in there.

In HCOL cities in the USA, it can be tough to get a setup like this. One may suggest to move cities, but my community is my friends in the city I live in. One may suggest getting new friends in a new city, but that's a tough and long process - friendships can take years to build, especially if I'm isolated and working from home. I could move further out of the city, but now I'm commuting 1hr+ one-way to see my friend…

That’s the joy of working remotely. But do you really hang out with your friends everyday? Serious question, I’m older and most of my friends are married with families (as am I). If we see each other, it’s well planned out and on the weekend.

Even when I was single, I had friends all across the Atlanta metro area and we still ended up having to drive an hour to see each other.

But it’s been a long time since I was single, and I will admit in my single days, work and my social life was intermixed so heavily that we would have all (male and female) ended up in HR today.

Re: Google asks some employees to share desks amid office downsizing

#170

Post by CydeWeys »

scarface74 wrote: post #105
CydeWeys wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a Googler who very much cares about having my own desk. I hate WFH because I find it to be miserable, strongly prefer WFO, and this would make WFO miserable too. I'm not gonna be miserable for 8 hours every day for any amount of money.

How is WFH miserable and if it is, it’s your home, can’t you make it more comfortable?

Just about every reason you've seen for preferring WFO over WFH posted online for the three years of the pandemic so far is true for me. No reason to rehash it all here.
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