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

latimes.com

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

#61

Post by dcolkitt »

beambot wrote: post #4

Google may save $1B this year on the P&L, but I can assure you that a large cohort of employees are vastly less effective (especially parents!). Time will tell how wfh pans out in terms of long-term enterprise value creation, after confounding variables (i.e. COVID) are removed. Source: A lot of my Googler friends are itching to get back into the office -- whether parents or people whose social lives centered around…

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. If you work from 9-6, and commute an hour each way, that basically means you hardly see your kids at all five days out of the week. That level of depression and alienation is going to do far more to hurt output. By comparison, the productivity impact of taking five minutes to give my daughter a kiss before she takes a nap is a de minims by comparison.

The people I work with are all great and interesting people. But frankly, I'd infinitely prefer to spend my lunch hour and coffee breaks and happy hours with my wife and kids. This may just be my preference, but I don't see how anyone with kids could actually prefer being alienated in an office instead of at home with their loved ones.

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

#62

Post by mycologos »

xbar wrote: post #38

False economy.

I'd never heard of this term. Per Wikipedia [1]:

> In economics, a false economy is an action that saves money at the beginning but which, over a longer period of time, results in more money being spent or wasted than being saved.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_economy

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

#64

Post by tyingq »

Cookingboy wrote: post #25
tyingq wrote: post #11

Guessing Google leadership doesn't believe that, since: If employees want to work remotely after Sept. 1, for more than 14 additional days per year, they’ll have to formally apply for it, according to a separate note marked “Need to know.” They can apply for up to 12 months in “the most exceptional circumstances.” The company could, however, call employees back to their assigned office at any point, the note said. ht…

>Google leadership doesn't believe that What do you mean. Obviously they believe the $1B in cost saving. But what they do also believe is that the value generated by people being in the office will exceed the obvious short term costs.

Well, for one, "primarily as a result of COVID-19" isn't the same as "result of employees working from home". I would guess it intersects some, though I don't know how much.

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

#65

Post by pfundstein »

reportingsjr wrote: post #41
beambot wrote: post #4

Google may save $1B this year on the P&L, but I can assure you that a large cohort of employees are vastly less effective (especially parents!). Time will tell how wfh pans out in terms of long-term enterprise value creation, after confounding variables (i.e. COVID) are removed. Source: A lot of my Googler friends are itching to get back into the office -- whether parents or people whose social lives centered around…

100% this. There are some loud people trying to say the opposite, but a lot of places have had productivity tank. I was talking to someone at a large financial company (think 10s of thousands of employees). Their workplace productivity went through the floor when things went work from home. They were willing to allow work from home for now to keep people safe, but will not be continuing in the future due to the effic…

No, I think the truth is that it varies. A counter anecdote is my own example: Our team of network, software and systems engineers has seen productivity increase over the past year of wfh - albeit with casual access to the office and labs.

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

#66

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

guyzero wrote: post #10

There's a lot of employee travel at big companies. Many times of the year you can hardly book a hotel room around Mountain View/Sunnyvale/Palo Alto. I think the pandemic has shown how non-essential a lot of that really was.

Back of the envelope calculation:

100k employees, each spending 10k/year on business travel... $1B.

The company could choose not to spend this money even without COVID, but it normally chooses to spend it, presumably because it considers the benefits worth it.

Personally, the difference in working atmosphere before and after I visited coworkers from a different country was massive, and likely well worth the travel expenses for the company.

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

#67

Post by bradlys »

dcolkitt wrote: post #61
beambot wrote: post #4

Google may save $1B this year on the P&L, but I can assure you that a large cohort of employees are vastly less effective (especially parents!). Time will tell how wfh pans out in terms of long-term enterprise value creation, after confounding variables (i.e. COVID) are removed. Source: A lot of my Googler friends are itching to get back into the office -- whether parents or people whose social lives centered around…

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…

> If you work from 9-6, and commute an hour each way, that basically means you hardly see your kids at all five days out of the week.

So live closer to work. Google pays enough for people to do that. The schools are usually better too.

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

#68

Post by catern »

kwertyoowiyop wrote: post #47

Scale does crazy things. If Google switched to a slightly cheaper salt packet they’d probably save $100M/year.

Scale isn't everything.

If each of 200000 employees used 10 salt packets a week, at a cost of $0.003 per salt packet (from https://www.warehouse115.com/single-serv-flat-salt-packets-p...), then if they cut their salt expenditures in half they'd save:

    >>> (200000*10*52*0.003)/2
    156000.0
$156,000

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

#69

Post by wuliwong »

beambot wrote: post #4

Google may save $1B this year on the P&L, but I can assure you that a large cohort of employees are vastly less effective (especially parents!). Time will tell how wfh pans out in terms of long-term enterprise value creation, after confounding variables (i.e. COVID) are removed. Source: A lot of my Googler friends are itching to get back into the office -- whether parents or people whose social lives centered around…

I am personally itching to get back into the office, at least a couple days a week. But, my team has been super productive throughout the pandemic and as of the last time we all chatted about it, I was really the only one who was concerned about getting back to the office. I do not work for Google, btw. Just experience from another tech company.

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

#70

Post by briandear »

beambot wrote: post #4

Google may save $1B this year on the P&L, but I can assure you that a large cohort of employees are vastly less effective (especially parents!). Time will tell how wfh pans out in terms of long-term enterprise value creation, after confounding variables (i.e. COVID) are removed. Source: A lot of my Googler friends are itching to get back into the office -- whether parents or people whose social lives centered around…

Going to argue against this as a theme. I work for an extremely huge consumer electronics company based in a zip code not far from Google; my org has been remote for over a year and in that time, we’ve had significant productivity. Most people are claiming to be far more productive since many people had 2 hour daily commutes. Also, our company is so secretive that “water color” innovation isn’t particularly a thing. Since we all have private offices in my org due to confidentiality needs, the only real face to face is in meetings. Meeting where we sit around a table and occasionally use a white board. Most people that work for this company aren’t joining because they need an adult kindergarten (and we don’t get free food either, aside from vending machines.) I don’t care about free food or massages; with the appreciation of RSUs, buying that myself is barely a rounding error. I also saved tens of thousands being remote outside of California since I don’t have to pay resident income tax anymore. My house payment is less than half of what I paid for rent and I have about 3000 more square feet of house. My productivity is much higher because my mental health is much better. And my kids are in schools that have been open full time since August. Being “in” Silicon Valley is fun for a minute, but it’s a gimmick for the most part. I’m not having chance encounters with Tim Draper at the Palo Alto Starbucks raising millions over a latte and if I were to start a company, raising SV VC money would be the result of having something worth funding rather than my kid being on the same little league team with some investor’s kid. As far as “Silicon Valley” talent — that’s a myth. Companies didn’t start in SV because of the talent. They started because of that’s where they happened to live. The incentives that made SV great in the 1960s were killed off by politicians choking the golden goose.
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