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Google cuts office space in Bay Area by more than a million square feet

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Re: Google cuts office space in Bay Area by more than a million square feet

#61

Post by HWR_14 »

thesuitonym wrote: post #14
oofta-boofta wrote: post #13

Google looked at how sailors share space on a sub and were like "yeah, that's the ticket". Hot-desking is the worst way to be in-office, on top of the worst way of working which is in-office. What happened to being a forward thinking and innovative company? These "geniuses" can't use their superior big brains just barely hiding under those infantilizing propeller hats to figure out a way to make remote work effective…

>What happened to being a forward thinking and innovative company? Google went public is what happened. You literally cannot make good decisions when you have to base everything around what will make the most profit for the shareholders this quarter.

You don't have to base everything around what will make the most profit this quarter. Bezos certainly didn't feel compelled to in the early days of being public.

Re: Google cuts office space in Bay Area by more than a million square feet

#62

Post by htag »

thesuitonym wrote: post #47
dilyevsky wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things weren’t like this for a long time after it was already public. I used to work there more than 5 years after ipo and their office environment (especially in zurich) was really good

You're right, and I addressed this in another reply, but keeping a good company culture requires a very special leadership team, and it can't and won't last forever.

* Eventually ownership will disperse from the core group of initial owners to investors in general

* As a larger ownership moves towards investors, decisions are made that sacrifice the special sauce in order to increase returns.

* Appeasing general investors leads towards enshittification.

Sometimes a strong leader (Jobs, Cook) can keep the investor class as bay for a period. Sometimes leadership can be consolidated for long periods of time to delay the process (Walton, Zuck), but it feels inevitable after IPO.

Re: Google cuts office space in Bay Area by more than a million square feet

#63

Post by bboygravity »

thesuitonym wrote: post #43
linguae wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sometimes cynical about publicly-traded companies, but Google seemed more forward-thinking in its pre-Alphabet era, and Apple seemed to be very forward thinking from 1997-2011 when Steve Jobs was running the company. Being a publicly-traded company doesn’t automatically mean resorting to bean counting and other bad forms of management.

You're absolutely right that being public doesn't automatically making bad choices--but it does eventually mean making poor choices. As long as you have a strong CEO, they can weather the storm of shareholder requests, but once you get to third or fourth generation leaders it typically becomes a race to the bottom. See: Every company in every industry.

Can you explain what things shareholders generally request?

As far as I know the only duty a company has towards shareholders is "protect them" (aka: don't mess up and make money). As long as the company eventually does that there is no issue. Even if it takes 8 quarters to become profitable (or 10+ years, see Amazon).

There are probably ways in which shareholders can get together and request something (in court?), but that almost never happens? Maybe I'm wrong. If so, would love to see examples.

Re: Google cuts office space in Bay Area by more than a million square feet

#64

Post by sauruk »

thesuitonym wrote: post #20
barbazoo wrote: post #5

They're getting rid of real estate yet force people to work from the office at least n days a week. Why not embrace remote and get rid of even more real estate.

Company I work for did this. Our CFO said he never wants to deal with real estate again. I will follow this man to the depths of hell and back.

(virtually)

Re: Google cuts office space in Bay Area by more than a million square feet

#65

Post by chaxor »

worrycue wrote: post #30
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About 6 months ago my manager, who happens to prefer RTO told me how if I only visit office sometime, I should not expect to have a desk. I was amused, but I did not ask if that means I can just stay home then. Clearly management class figured out a fun little plan. Announce RTO so that people can 'self-select' thus reducing headcount ( lower cost ), introduce hybrid ( so that you can claim you are flexible in postin…

> people can 'self-select' thus reducing headcount Self-select usually mean the brightest and most capable select another job though.

I think that's what was implied by "it's now or never".

Your company forces anti-remote policies? If you're worth anything, just leave.

Re: Google cuts office space in Bay Area by more than a million square feet

#66

Post by HWR_14 »

bbor wrote: post #35
grogenaut wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is google actually hot desking or is that a extrapolation on them cutting office space.

TBF it's "two people share a desk on alternate days", and as the other commenter said, only in limited areas for now. How anyone thought that was a good idea, I have no idea.

If I am doing "2 days in office, 3 remote" for my employees, why would I want to pay twice as much so desks can sit vacant more than half the time?

Re: Google cuts office space in Bay Area by more than a million square feet

#67

Post by eftychis »

gumby wrote: post #57
lern_too_spel wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google management has always been incompetent. It's just that now that economic conditions have forced them to make more drastic decisions that their incompetence is even more obvious.

Actually I think Schmidt was quite good. Sadly he's the only CEO the company has ever had.

And Schmidt was forced on them.

Re: Google cuts office space in Bay Area by more than a million square feet

#68

Post by Osiris »

space_invaders wrote: post #50
oofta-boofta wrote: post #13

Google looked at how sailors share space on a sub and were like "yeah, that's the ticket". Hot-desking is the worst way to be in-office, on top of the worst way of working which is in-office. What happened to being a forward thinking and innovative company? These "geniuses" can't use their superior big brains just barely hiding under those infantilizing propeller hats to figure out a way to make remote work effective…

Google has turned into the "new IBM" for years now. I've worked with Google engineers and managers from different "generations". It's shocking how the newer engineers are just your average consultancy engineer with leet code practice. They have little abstracting capabilities and would be pissed-off if you use some tool/workflow that's not "The Google Way™" (and that includes things like Github for code reviews (inst…

I worked at a startup with just 2 other engineers. They hired a guy from Google with a decade less experience than me.

When I arrived I was taking my time to understand the culture, company, needs, etc. before making any suggestions. One example, they did Agile with sprints and I think KANBAN works better. But, I didn’t see it as an important issue to spend time on.

So the Google guy comes in and from day 1 began making suggestions for big changes to both process and the software architecture. He often started by saying, “At Google we…”

I was let go, in part, because the CEO thought I was not contributing to certain technical discussions. I told him I thought the proposed change wouldn’t bring any value to potential customers because it was a purely internal architectural change. We had a lot of actual customer facing work to do and this was a distraction.

So… a guy with only 5 years of professional experience all at Google won over the 26 year old CEO more than someone with 20 years of experience across multiple companies and having built a very similar product just a year before.

Re: Google cuts office space in Bay Area by more than a million square feet

#69

Post by [deleted] »

bbor wrote: post #36
alex_lav wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> on top of the worst way of working which is in-office. It's funny how both sides of this debate present their opinions as fact

It _is_ objectively true that WFH is better for the environment. But oh well, so far wildfires are contained to just wildfire season, so not a big deal :))))))

[deleted]
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