Internally Google might be just fine, but optics are equally important in this industry. Before Sundar took over Google never went through bad PR. It's just an observation, not a dig at Google's affairs.
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
#42How quickly the tide turns in our industry..from massages at your desk to sitting on each other's laps. Hey they could perhaps still continue the massage to each other though.
Re: Google asks some employees to share desks amid office downsizing
#43When I was at Google (Kirkland), the offices were basically open-plan fishbowls. WFH was massively better. I once worked at a startup (pre-covid) that had an open-plan setup with a significant portion of people using standing desks. They provided one stool for 2 standing desks justifying it because "if you use a standing desk you should be standing most of the time". Pure cheapskate short-sightedness.
Well, that could be justified as maintaining the health of the employees by forcing one of two to stand up at any time.
Re: Google asks some employees to share desks amid office downsizing
#44I guess I had already figured that Google switched to hotel-style desks when covid started.
Re: Google asks some employees to share desks amid office downsizing
#45Remember 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!
100% agree. I thought open plan was bad, then the norm became open plan hotdesking (no permanency). Such a morale killer.
Re: Google asks some employees to share desks amid office downsizing
#46Look... if you want people to RTO, maybe make it so that there's less overhead? Reading this article made me just want to stay at my own desk at home.
Agreed, I have the perfect setup at home, I paid for everything (except laptop) and I pay for all of the electricity, bandwidth, accessories and upgrades, and furniture and upgrades.
Saving the company a lot of money and I'm at my desk way longer!
Re: Google asks some employees to share desks amid office downsizing
#47I wonder how their recruiters will respond to those that want an office desk 5 days a week.
I remember visiting MS (Redmond), in the 1990s (It was at the "Longhorn" launch, if that helps date it).
A friend of mine, worked in one of the nearby buildings, and took me to his office (He was doing documentation, or something for Encarta).
I was struck by the narrow, dark, corridors, and the small, windowless, offices. My friend said that all MS engineers had a private office.
I have since been told that the building I visited was probably an old one, and not representative of most buildings, and I think that MS went open-plan, since.
I have also visited the Facebook (it was still called Facebook, back then) office, in NYC.
The programming floor was a really big, noisy, open-plan office, jammed with desks (standing and sitting), and everyone was talking away. No windows. The floor was surrounded by conference rooms and offices, which had windows.
The Japanese offices of my own company were sort of like that, but with uniform desks, and quiet as a mouse; even with hundreds of people. No individual offices. VPs, with billion-dollar budgets, had a small desk, in the corner.
Re: Google asks some employees to share desks amid office downsizing
#48Hahahahaha!
Re: Google asks some employees to share desks amid office downsizing
#49So Y.T.'s mom has clacked up the stairs in her black pumps and gone into her
office, actually a large room with computer workstations placed across it in a
grid. Used to be divided up by partitions, but the EBGOC boys didn't like it,
said what would happen if there had to be an evacuation? All those partitions
would impede the free flow of unhinged panic. So no more partitions. Just
workstations and chairs. Not even any desktops. Desktops encourage the use of
paper, which is archaic and reflects inadequate team spirit. What is so special
about your work that you have to write it down on a piece of paper that only
you get to see? That you have to lock it away inside a desk? When you're
working for the Feds, everything you do is the property of the United States of
America. You do your work on the computer. The computer keeps a copy of
everything, so that if you get sick or something, it's all there where your
co-workers and supervisors can get access to it. If you want to write little
notes or make phone doodles, you're perfectly free to do that at home, in your
spare time. And there's the question of interchangeability. Fed workers, like
military people, are intended to be interchangeable parts. What happens if your
workstation should break down? You're going to sit there and twiddle your
thumbs until it gets fixed? No siree, you're going to move to a spare
workstation and get to work on that. And you don't have that flexibility if
you've got half a ton of personal stuff cached inside of a desk, strewn around
a desktop.
So there is no paper in a Fed office. All the workstations are the same. You come in in the morning, pick one at random, sit down, and get to work. You could try to favor a particular station, try to sit there every day, but it would be noticed. Generally you pick the unoccupied workstation that's closest to the door. That way, whoever came in earliest sits closest, whoever came in latest is way in the back, for the rest of the day it's obvious at a glance who's on the ball in this office and who is -- as they whisper to each other in the bathrooms -- having problems.
Re: Google asks some employees to share desks amid office downsizing
#50Makes a lot of sense given how many people are WFH