Google has gotten so cheap, employees now have to share desks

You probably didn't work for a company that has a global network that is capable of running Youtube levels of traffic around the planet with the latency requirements of Google Ads.

I used to consult, and got at one point hired to explain to higher management, at a small but important "regulatory" government department, why 256kbps ADSL sucked for rdesktop (which was on a private ATM channel from the incumbent telco, very expensive, and also very bad, it was still ADSL over an ATM backbone, in 2005, supposedly it was more secure ...). Note 256kbps = 32 KB/sec. I'm not sure how much they paid, but the page describing the product at the telco said to call to make an appointment for sales to visit you to get some pricing info. Oh, and the backend connection for this had to be done in duplicate, with endpoints in 2 different countries. I'm pretty sure just the backend connections cost a decent house a month at minimum.

Needless to say, over 32 KB/sec, rdesktop is pretty much unusable. Not that said incumbent telco actually delivered 32 KB/sec, merely because they paid through the nose.

So I wrote a 40 page document, written in 12 days, for a just-barely-not-6-figure-bill. They had an excellent restaurant. Steak for 4 euro, and every week a different theme. Even the spaghetti bolognaise was excellent. Didn't do anything for the rest of 2 months, going in several times with my access badge just for the restaurant (to "discuss followup"). This went very slowly because of the top 3 levels of management, who had to approve everything, 2 were government appointed positions. These people never even came in because their performance and future at the company was only tied to their party's performance in elections, which had absolutely nothing to do with what this department was regulating.

Google can probably provide incredible remote desktops. Small companies can't, due to cost (not of the connection, hardware cost. Remote desktops, to be good, need to be machines running large VMs. That means modern i9s with 64G of ram MINIMUM). I'm not sure what Google uses, but ... Large companies and government can't, due to "best practices" preventing timely upgrades. This happens because they require everything be explained, risk-assessed, verified by external consultants, signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.

Latency nowadays isn’t bad or even noticeable.

I worked for a company during Covid where I had to remotely connect to a Windows machine, and from there, connect to a Linux machine.

The only issue I had was keyboard mapping, specially because I was using a macbook. I had to remap a few keys, but even then, a few hotkeys didn’t work.

It’s not perfect, but it’s getting better and I can see many companies will force us all to this in 10 years time.

This makes sense though. If people aren’t coming in 5 days a week, why should they have dedicated spaces for 5 days?

We have a hoteling system which works pretty well. You get lockers you can place things you don’t want to carry each time in (KB/Mouse/Pen stand/cables/etc for me) and before I come to the office I reserve a desk and plug in my laptop into the docking station and I have my whole setup ready (well in my case I also need to plug in my Keyboard and mouse, but for most people thars all they need).

I preferred my dedicated space with all my stuff, but when no one’s coming in 5 days a week the lack of a dedicated space makes complete sense.

Agree. It goes against my grain to seem in support of anything FANG companies do, but this is just a logical extension of the WFH trend. One of the reasons it will stay is that it enables corps to save on office space, and Google is simply ahead of the curve: the businesses that realize this cost saving effect first will have an advantage. Most employees will likely see the small discomfort as a fair price to pay for being able to work from home many/most days. (Not counting the vocal minority that seem to love commuting, office work, mingling and watercooler chatting).

I could explain what I think he meant, but it's more fun to watch everyone else "explain" it.