Google forcing employees to come back into the office but making them share desks to cut costs

[Eric]

Yeah, what's not to love about this policy.

Google tells employees to share desks as it looks to cut costs

CNBC reports that an internal FAQ document seen by the publication reveals the desk-sharing plan will affect Google Cloud employees, which make up more than a quarter...

www.techspot.com

Google tells employees to share desks as it looks to cut costs​

WTF?! With a market cap of $1.18 trillion, Google is one of the biggest companies in the world, so one wouldn't expect some of its employees to share desks with co-workers. But that will become a reality starting from the next quarter as Google embraces "real estate efficiency."

 

[Pumbaa]

Sharing is caring.

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

Yeah, what's not to love about this policy.

Google tells employees to share desks as it looks to cut costs

CNBC reports that an internal FAQ document seen by the publication reveals the desk-sharing plan will affect Google Cloud employees, which make up more than a quarter...

www.techspot.com

Google tells employees to share desks as it looks to cut costs​

Not to come off as contrarian, but it appears that this means sharing is somebody is using their desk on the days they are working from home. I don’t think that’s too much to ask in exchange for being able to work from home half (or more) of the week. Being able to continue to work from home is a huge win. Unless these people were home schooled, they should be well used to sharing desks throughout their entire education. Better this cost saving measure than axing even more people just to give shareholders their desired productivity to profit ratio.

 

[Herdfan]

So did they already dump a lot of office space or did they simply shut down floors to save energy and don't want to reopen them?

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

So did they already dump a lot of office space or did they simply shut down floors to save energy and don't want to reopen them?

I worked for Cisco Systems back in the early 2000’s. One of the good forward thinking things they did was instead of building a massive interconnected mega campus as they grew they built a bunch of mid-sized non-descript 2 – 3 story buildings. So in a downturn they could just combine downsized departments into less buildings and either keep the vacant buildings closed or lease or sell them to other companies.

 

[Edd]

Sharing desks? “Oh, the humanity”, is the obvious joke. Who cares?

 

[Eric]

What I’m trying to understand is why they are consolidating in such a fashion. As it is all of these buildings are sitting empty in the Bay Area and they’re pleading with people to occupy them, throw on top of that that they’re requiring people to come back into the office when it’s not necessary for 99% of these jobs. Just seems like this is rubbing it in.

 

[AG_PhamD]

If I was a google employee I’d rather share a desk than lose my job due to cost cutting. That should be pretty obvious.

It would seem silly to share desks considering how much money Google has except for the fact that the employees are only working in the office half the time. And there’s considerable resource saving if you can cut your office space in half.

If anyone has ever worked in a hospital, they would be well aware there’s an awful lot of sharing of workspaces. Even if you have your own office, much of the time you’ll be on some floor in another building using a shared workspace. I have an office but a work in a psych hospital, so there’s a lot of patients in locked wards where I and most providers end up using shared offices. And of course, some people are slobs and it sucks. But you have to remind yourself it’s not “your” desk and accept the fact some people are just not organized or have the same level of cleanliness.

I know some people who work in mental health facilities who are not allowed to have any of their own pictures or decor on their desk or walls despite not sharing an office. This is to maintain a certain aesthetic- which in a decently well funded Psych program is usually that of a Pottery Barn or West Elm catalog.

Let’s see how much the Millennial employees whine about this publicly and how many HR issues this causes to the point they have to reverse this policy. (I’m a millennial myself)

 

[MEJHarrison]

We went in a last year to remove our stuff from our space. Then a couple months back, they had a "first come, first serve" on most of the office furniture and some equipment and other miscellaneous stuff. At this point if they tried to bring us back, they'd need to find new space for us. Or re-rent the back half of the building again from Nike.

That said, we were going in tomorrow afternoon to work in the office for the first time since Covid. Our boss from Arizona is in town (I'm in Portland). So it was going to be more of a hang out and "work" in person since we've never actually met the guy. Due to the recent snow we've received, we're putting it off till next week. But we're just going to find a conference room and bring in laptops or find an old training room with machines setup. It's couldn't be an on-going solution to return to the office.

 

[Alli]

My first few years teaching, the school was massively overcrowded. We had “floating” teachers. These poor folks loaded all their books and supplies on a cart and pushed them to whichever classroom they were assigned for whichever class period. That also meant that those of us with classrooms had to leave during our planning periods so that the “floaters” could use our rooms. It was miserable.