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Google has gotten so cheap, employees now have to share desks

arstechnica.com

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Re: Google has gotten so cheap, employees now have to share desks

#21

Post by lovich »

JPKab wrote: post #10
lovich wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doing anything less is wasteful, and if Google was doing this before it was robbing investors. Overton window keeps moving in the direction of fuck the employees to benefit the shareholders I guess. Having a personalized space used to not be considered a perk but table stacks for working at a company not too long ago. I get that the employees aren’t in office all week but that’s kinda on google for not having enoug…

Would you pay to rent a car for 5 days if you were only going to drive it for 2 days? You wouldn't, because you care about your own money. Why is it that we pretend like "shareholders" are these mythical beasts that are different than us? I have money in the stock market. You probably do as well. Why does your money suddenly become ok to waste if it's invested in a company? 5 days a week, yes, everyone gets their own…

Would you pay to keep inventory on the shelves when you could do JiT delivery of parts and keep expenditure on stocks at a minimum? Did not having spare capacity work out for car companies when the logistics chain was disrupted during Covid? I bring this up as an example because you seem to be(and this is entirely my interpretation that could be incorrect) implying that the spare capacity of the space per person is always a negative to be ruthlessly optimized out. I would posit that it has benefits like morale that need to be evaluated as a tradeoff. That's also ignoring the whole point that they demanded the workers return to the office and then didn't invest in making that possible, so now workers are dealing with the worst of both worlds.

>Nobody but the most OCD germophobe is going to have lower productivity because they are sitting in a desk that someone else was in a day before.

I wouldn't expect germaphobia to be the issue, it's the constant change that prevents employees from getting into a routine. We all already know that software engineers need to get into the zone to be productive, which takes time and becoming comfortable with what they are working on. How easy is that going to be when you have to adapt to a new environment everytime you go to work and reset up your workstation in the manner that works for the engineer?

Re: Google has gotten so cheap, employees now have to share desks

#22

Post by naikrovek »

JPKab wrote: post #5

Clickbait title because arstechnica is a garbage publication. Employees are expected to work 2 days a week out of the office, and will swap the desk with another employee. They will not sit at the same desk at the same time. Doing anything less is wasteful, and if Google was doing this before it was robbing investors.

> arstechnica is a garbage publication.

hmm... disagree. strongly. have you seen the quality of some publications? surely the line between garbage and not-garbage is lower than this.

unless you are someone who considers something extremely political to be the only good publication or something; I hope not

Re: Google has gotten so cheap, employees now have to share desks

#23

Post by naikrovek »

omeze wrote: post #6

Google (at least circa 2014 when I graduated) has slowly taken on the image of a “retirement home” (i.e. where you go to turn your brain off and clock in to get paid) in elite STEM undergrad programs. Oracle had solidified their spot, but at least at Google it used to be easy to find interesting teams if you knew people there to navigate the team matching process. Now it’s decline is in full swing, its sad but seems…

once you're a publicly traded company for a while, the company will always eventually go down this spiral. completely independent of success, the company will go from a great place to work to a soulless corporate machine, and it is ALWAYS the people who are in charge of the money who cause this. every freaking time it is the love of profit over nearly all else and the fear of wasting money in any way which are responsible for this.

Re: Google has gotten so cheap, employees now have to share desks

#25

Post by lost_tourist »

robswc wrote: post #9
lovich wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doing anything less is wasteful, and if Google was doing this before it was robbing investors. Overton window keeps moving in the direction of fuck the employees to benefit the shareholders I guess. Having a personalized space used to not be considered a perk but table stacks for working at a company not too long ago. I get that the employees aren’t in office all week but that’s kinda on google for not having enoug…

I honestly hate open offices so much. I'm constantly amazed any work gets done with the layout.

I wouldn't have made it through my last consulting gig without headphones/earbuds and a 45" (114 cm for the more enlightened measurement connoisseurs among us) ultrawide screen to block 95% of my view that I bought and brought in to the office.

Re: Google has gotten so cheap, employees now have to share desks

#26

Post by Imnimo »

JPKab wrote: post #10
lovich wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doing anything less is wasteful, and if Google was doing this before it was robbing investors. Overton window keeps moving in the direction of fuck the employees to benefit the shareholders I guess. Having a personalized space used to not be considered a perk but table stacks for working at a company not too long ago. I get that the employees aren’t in office all week but that’s kinda on google for not having enoug…

Would you pay to rent a car for 5 days if you were only going to drive it for 2 days? You wouldn't, because you care about your own money. Why is it that we pretend like "shareholders" are these mythical beasts that are different than us? I have money in the stock market. You probably do as well. Why does your money suddenly become ok to waste if it's invested in a company? 5 days a week, yes, everyone gets their own…

I go even further - I OWN a car I don't drive every day. I don't even split it with my neighbor.

Re: Google has gotten so cheap, employees now have to share desks

#27

Post by thorncorona »

Galanwe wrote: post #18

> Google has an internal-only virtual desktop tool for thin clients called "CloudTop" that it would like employees to transition to This is the end. All thin client/remote desktop solutions that I have used are laggy enough to piss off a programmer, while fast enough to fool a manager. It's the perfect killing blow to productivity and morale.

Cloud tops are quite good. I’ve enjoyed using them.

Run a mbp as your carry around, and then everything else runs on an overbuilt server vm with a direct connection to shared storage.

I’m able to sync to head + rebuild 100k+ files in < 5 mins

Re: Google has gotten so cheap, employees now have to share desks

#28

Post by chmod600 »

naikrovek wrote: post #23
omeze wrote: post #6

Google (at least circa 2014 when I graduated) has slowly taken on the image of a “retirement home” (i.e. where you go to turn your brain off and clock in to get paid) in elite STEM undergrad programs. Oracle had solidified their spot, but at least at Google it used to be easy to find interesting teams if you knew people there to navigate the team matching process. Now it’s decline is in full swing, its sad but seems…

once you're a publicly traded company for a while, the company will always eventually go down this spiral. completely independent of success, the company will go from a great place to work to a soulless corporate machine, and it is ALWAYS the people who are in charge of the money who cause this. every freaking time it is the love of profit over nearly all else and the fear of wasting money in any way which are respon…

Can you explain more? I would have guessed any great collection of people is bound to slowly unravel for all kinds of reasons. Why would you place so much of the blame on money people?

Re: Google has gotten so cheap, employees now have to share desks

#29

Post by chmod600 »

lovich wrote: post #7
JPKab wrote: post #5

Clickbait title because arstechnica is a garbage publication. Employees are expected to work 2 days a week out of the office, and will swap the desk with another employee. They will not sit at the same desk at the same time. Doing anything less is wasteful, and if Google was doing this before it was robbing investors.

> Doing anything less is wasteful, and if Google was doing this before it was robbing investors. Overton window keeps moving in the direction of fuck the employees to benefit the shareholders I guess. Having a personalized space used to not be considered a perk but table stacks for working at a company not too long ago. I get that the employees aren’t in office all week but that’s kinda on google for not having enoug…

Maybe change happens for a good reason sometimes? Engineers no longer have secretaries, file cabinets, etc. We have all this technology to help us organize things, is an individual office still the right thing?

I get the value of quiet time, I just don't feel like it's lost. Still plenty of places to hide. Maybe I'm an outlier.

Re: Google has gotten so cheap, employees now have to share desks

#30

Post by goalieca »

chmod600 wrote: post #28
naikrovek wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

once you're a publicly traded company for a while, the company will always eventually go down this spiral. completely independent of success, the company will go from a great place to work to a soulless corporate machine, and it is ALWAYS the people who are in charge of the money who cause this. every freaking time it is the love of profit over nearly all else and the fear of wasting money in any way which are respon…

Can you explain more? I would have guessed any great collection of people is bound to slowly unravel for all kinds of reasons. Why would you place so much of the blame on money people?

Either you’re growing or finding efficiencies.
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