51–60 of 214 posts
It seems like each day there's an article lately about reasons _not_ to work at Google. Sad to see how they went from an enviable place to work to a place to avoid these past years. (Although internally, things might be better than it looks from the outside of course)
I doubt any Googlers actually care about this stuff
I am sitting at a Google desk and there are 5/6 people not here in the desks in my vicinity. I would prefer fewer desks and to actually get to sit next to people rather than being scattered among a sea of mostly empty desks due to people WFH.
Id rather enforce something around. The first 1-2 floors in some specific buildings on every campus will turn into shared spaces instead of forcing everyone out of their desks.
Decisions seem so poorly though recently that the only way I can make sense of many is thinking that they are trying to get people to quit to avoid paying for severances and taking another morale and press hit at announcing layoffs.
Discouraging employees to all come at the office at once seems to dilute the “back to the office” mantra of “Employees work better when they can collaborate in person”.
My workplace has a hybrid policy where teams pick one day to all be in the office, and employees “should” be in the office 3 days a week, but if your “collaboration” involves people on another team, then you’re usually going to have some of them zooming in (and sometimes people zoom in from conference rooms in the same building because of miscommunication about who is in the office), and at that that point you may as well all zoom in from home.
Google's South Lake Union campus cost $802 million[1]. Google's parent company, Alphabet, spent $70 billion on stock buybacks[2]. I know I'm drastically oversimplifying the complexities of accounting required for a trillion-dollar empire, but this comes across as more of a punitive measure than a cost-saving measure. I acknowledge that being able to take the force of money and apply in a direction that results in gro…
> So, Sundar, when do we start thinking about where Google will be in 20 years instead of the next quarter? Why would he care?
1. The CEO is the leader of the company
2. Good leaders are visionaries that have the capacity of picturing a better future, realizing what needs to be done, and then delegating and executing those requirements to manifest that vision into reality.
3. Sundar wants to be a good leader.
It would be easy to say that my #2 is correct, but doesn't apply to Sundar as CEO. I've heard his tenure associated with the "MBA-ification" of Google. Solely focusing on maximizing shareholder returns, which in the case of the company sitting on the multi-billion dollar revenue hose, means cutting down on anything that gets in the way of that.
That would indeed allow shareholders to get a great return on their investment for some time, but if you reduce google to a private AI research lab and a digital ads platform, there's nothing left to react (or bring forth) to changes in how people interact with technology. I feel like nothing exemplifies this further than Bard.
Perhaps I am too much of an optimist. But it really feels like he should care.
When 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.
Look... 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.
> “Most Googlers will now share a desk with one other Googler,” the internal document stated, noting they expect employees to come in on alternate days so they're not at the same desk on the same day. “Through the matching process, they will agree on a basic desk setup and establish norms with their desk partner and teams to ensure a positive experience in the new shared environment.” If only, there was an easier sol…
What is an easier solution?
> to ensure... desks are kept clean and free from personal items. This was called "hotdesking", then "hotelling", and it's unclear why I would arrange with a coworker to timeshare a desk when a proper hotdesking arrangement would likely be cheaper and easier.
I kinda like the hotelling idea because you can mingle with people who work in other domains and mostly avoid that small percentage of really obnoxious folks. I suppose it could get problematic if you're the resident Hot Girl in an office of needy males (sorry if that sounds sexist and I'm sure I would absolutely hate being Hot Guy in an office of needy gals and no I'm not being facetious at all)