Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google is saving $1B per year as a result of employees working from home

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 355 posts

Re: Google is saving $1B per year as a result of employees working from home

#201

Post by adrianN »

ghufran_syed wrote: post #198
bseidensticker wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the annual increase is capped at 2% and inflation is >2% then the value reaped by property tax will eventually go to 0. Similar to how if you rent the same place for long enough and it's rent controlled your rent effectively gets cheaper even though it's going up.

and if inflation is under 2% and the city always increases by the maximum of 2%, then eventually the value of the property tax paid will be infinite, right? How is that analysis useful?

If you make property tax a fixed percentage of the value of the property, it automatically adjusts with inflation.

Re: Google is saving $1B per year as a result of employees working from home

#202

Post by lrem »

seoaeu wrote: post #118
paxys wrote: post #81

Google 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…

Like one expense they saved on is sending out recruiters and engineers to likely thousands of career fairs, recruiting sessions, etc. Nobody would reasonably argue that skipping all of them is a sustainable strategy long term even if it hasn't hurt them much so far.

Oh, it is causing pain already. Recently I pitched to a friend fixing a component as a great project for a very junior engineer. Only to find out that neither his nor my team has any sufficiently junior engineers on hand. So the oceans will keep getting ever so slightly boiled until we hire some, or one of the too senior engineers runs out of more important things to do. Sure it won't bring Google down right away, but having cruft like that accumulate kills efficiency in the long run. And Google thrives in cutting those epsilons.

Re: Google is saving $1B per year as a result of employees working from home

#203

Post by vecinu »

bradlys wrote: post #170
ryandrake wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're living in a dream world if you think $600K household is the norm in Silicon valley, even for FAANG employees. We are talking about a small percentage of employees (1. those with FAANG spouses) out of a small percentage of employees (2. top leveled, say Google L6+) out of a small percentage of employees (3. engineers) out of a small percentage of companies (4. FAANG). The rest of us, who are not 1 AND 2 AND 3 A…

> You're living in a dream world if you think $600K household is the norm in Silicon valley, even for FAANG employees. For married couples above 30 with one high TC earner - it's extremely common. You're not marrying a barista in SF if you work at FAANG. I haven't met anyone who is married, above 30, who also works at FAANG, the spouse can legally work in the country, and the household income is below $500K. I know t…

> I haven't met anyone who is married, above 30, who also works at FAANG, the spouse can legally work in the country, and the household income is below $500K.

You may have a very limited circle of folks you talk to and are willing to share such details with you. Myself and a number of close friends do not have a $500k TC household as married couples. Not even close.

> It's financial suicide to do otherwise. (Bye-bye 1/3 of your income for 18 years when you inevitably get divorced)

Maybe I misunderstood you but you're saying you should marry someone who earns similarly to you because of the inevitable divorce? I'm not sure I follow, you're advocating to marry for the financial prospects first because marriages end in divorce?

Re: Google is saving $1B per year as a result of employees working from home

#204

Post by SilverRed »

quantumsequoia wrote: post #163
Guest42 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the amount of resumes they get, I'd question how important it is for tier 1 companies. I have gone to career fairs and learned a great deal about companies I had never heard of, but it seems as though Google would just receive thousands of applications per opening and approach it algorithmically anyways. Although I've had contacts get poached via LinkedIn or given challenges from Googling certain tech topics.

Google is one of the most sought after companies, but this is due to them actively advertising Google as a great place to work. Actually talking to someone who works at Google makes it more real and attainable in candidates minds and reinforces Google as a desirable place to work If Google were to stop attending, they risk newer generations of engineers shifting their perspective on Google, especially these days when…

Sounds about right. The OP sounds like "Why does coke advertise their product so much when they are the most well known product in existence"

Because that status will decline without advertising.

Re: Google is saving $1B per year as a result of employees working from home

#205

Post by dcolkitt »

bobthepanda wrote: post #114
dcolkitt wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We could just let people do whatever they wanted. It is unclear why, having complained about being forced to work from the office, the set of employees happy to work from now think imposing their preferences on everybody else is supposed to be better for everyone.

That’s a point I agree on. But my understanding is that most of the companies that are re opening offices are insisting that employees eventually come back. Is Google/Apple/JP Morgan letting people stay full WFH?

Re: Google is saving $1B per year as a result of employees working from home

#206

Post by Google234 »

ryandrake wrote: post #164
dcolkitt wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yea commute + kid is the key motivation for WFH for me. My Bay Area commute is 4+ hours per day, depending on traffic. This means in order to guarantee I can be at work for my first 8AM meeting, I need to wake up around 5AM and leave the house at 5:30. My day is over at around 5PM (thankfully I don't work for a workaholic culture start-up), but this still means I'm home by 7:30-8PM most days. I'm basically driving 50…

Why do you live 2 hours away?

Re: Google is saving $1B per year as a result of employees working from home

#207

Post by kyawzazaw »

lrem wrote: post #199
Guest42 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the amount of resumes they get, I'd question how important it is for tier 1 companies. I have gone to career fairs and learned a great deal about companies I had never heard of, but it seems as though Google would just receive thousands of applications per opening and approach it algorithmically anyways. Although I've had contacts get poached via LinkedIn or given challenges from Googling certain tech topics.

Unsolicited resumes are the most noisy channel of all. TBF I'm somewhat surprised it is even cost effective to keep reading them. But, send an engineer to spend an hour talking at a university and you get a bunch of very promising leads every time. Source: I've been an interviewer in Google for a number of years and talked at a university at some point.

How do you determine promising leads among hundreds?

Let’s say for example you send someone to UMinnesota or UMD.

What’s the process here to get leads for internships or new grad roles?

Re: Google is saving $1B per year as a result of employees working from home

#209

Post by waterhouse »

akomtu wrote: post #123
lamontcg wrote: post #104

Earlier 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 is actually the biggest proof that the big players, including the gov, don't take co2 emissions seriously. If JP Morgan's Dimon is bragging about how he'll pull employees back to offices and the WH pretends to look the other way, it's safe to assume they don't give two shits about the carbon whatever. Real estate prices is what really matters to them.

The claim is usually that people are more productive in the office. Assuming that's true, then what's actually more expensive: having existing employees commute, or employing, say, 10% more people? Even if you only care about carbon costs, what are the carbon costs of raising, educating, training, and giving healthcare and everything else to 10% more people?

Re: Google is saving $1B per year as a result of employees working from home

#210

Post by pillefitz »

newusr429 wrote: post #144
katbyte wrote: post #128

You 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.

I was the biggest advocate for WFH in the last year but recently I feel pretty down. Life feels so repetitive. Part of it is possibly lockdown, but a bigger part I think is that I have way more free time to think about things. All the shitty things about open office and commuting seemed to serve as a distraction that kept me more occupied. It's weird. I'm not saying WFH is bad, but there are definitely some effects t…

For me it's slacking of at the office without feeling guilty. Taking 10 minute coffee breaks, walking 5 minutes to the next toilet. At home I have far less interruptions and feel the need to be constantly available in Teams.
Post reply on HN