People collectively don't seem to know how to value their labor. If anything, they should argue for a pay increase to offset the costs Google is externalizing in utilities, on-site benefits, need for security, food, space, etc.

If Google is progressive, they should buck the trend and do something like build sound-proof office-apartments that employees can hotel in for a few days at a time, and allow children. That would be worth a 10% "pay cut" to at least some of the people they want to remain on site.

We're in a new world. There's no reason to make employees suffer because someone did things a certain way a generation or two ago.

Came here looking for this. Back in my G days, before they were the high paying behemoth they are now, there were regular complaints about compensation. The first corporate response was absolutely tone-deaf. They created a tool for you to see your total compensation that included all-in values like on-site amenities. The natural response was one of unhappiness and people requesting to opt out of eating at work and promising to never use the laundry facilities or the gym or many of the other bits of bait they use to lure new grads. The next response came much later and it was a broad leveling of pay. Obviously the second pass was better.

Alphabet will save a lot of money by not having so many warm bodies in the office. They eat less, they poop less, they generate less heat and make the AC work better, they require fewer support staff to be in the buildings, etc. Reducing pay because you're using fewer company paid resources is just as tone-deaf as that first try.

> before they were the high paying behemoth they are now, there were regular complaints about compensation.

You mean back when they were illegally colluding with Apple and other technology companies to suppress wages.

> The next response came much later and it was a broad leveling of pay.

I got a 20% pay bump after the wage fixing scheme collapsed and those pay resets happened, and my employer was in no way involved in it-- Apple and Google's conspiracy just suppressed wages far beyond the active participants.

It's not about tone-deafness it's about maximizing profit. Parties that will willfully and knowingly break the law to conspire to fix wages aren't going to be bothered by moves which seem a little cruel or illogical.

Good point. Tone-deaf was how we took it.

> they poop less

I worked at Google for about 10 years. Never having to hunt for an open bathroom stall while under a certain degree of physiological distress has perhaps been the greatest benefit to WFH for me.

The cost of the A/C and janitorial staff is peanuts compared to the money they spent on commercial real estate. If they don’t get ROI, someone is going to be held accountable. If the offices close and the value of commercial real estate plummets there are huge players that are going to be wiped out, with macro-economic ramifications. It’s a perfect example of sunk cost fallacy, but on the scale of billions of dollars.

It's been a while for me but I recall that a significant amount of the real estate already existed. I worked in a number of buildings in MTV, starting before the SGI retrofit. Most were old and had little done to them. There was new construction (mYbe the Zurich office, with Urs' apartment on top?) but way more remodeling. I know they built the housing near moffet but how much other real estate did they really do from the ground up? And how a big of a dent is that? (I'd eager there's some tax magic there too.)

My point is, G can afford the losses on selling some buildings and have unused capacity without hurting their stock price.

Google has something close to $50B in real estate holdings. They announced $7B in real estate spending in 2021. [1]

That press release reads more like a "head of state" spending in key constituent areas for some policy changes needed. Shovels in dirt wins politicians, and Google needs all the help it can get with the looming antitrust issues.

[1] - https://blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/inve...

Alphabet made the calculation a long time ago that paying for you to poop in the building is a rounding error compared to the extra productivity doing so allows them to squeeze out of you. That hasn't changed and it's unclear to me why the pandemic would change it.

> If anything, they should argue for a pay increase to offset the costs Google is externalizing in utilities, on-site benefits, need for security, food, space, etc.

This is absolutely correct.

If Google would tell me that I'll see my pay cut by about 10% for working remotely, I'd put in 25% less effort – 15% for space, power, etc., and 10% to make up for the cut.

You misunderstand how companies decide salaries. You aren't paid the value you provide your company. You don't get a raise if you save the company money.

You are paid the least the company thinks it can pay to get an acceptable applicant to fill your position. The truth is that there are many capable people who would prefer to work remote, and they're willing to take a pay cut to make that happen. Therefore companies don't need to pay remote workers as much.

Workers collectively dont get to value their own labor. There price is the market price, and remote work always paid a lot less than in-office work, for obvious economic reasons.

Please elaborate more on the "obvious economic reasons".

For some reason, I don't see anything economic (do you care where stuff is made? I don't, really, only that it gets made, the rest is irrelevant detail), nor obvious here.

There are more people in the remote pool than in the in-office pool. Also it is better for employees to be remote than to be in the office, meaning they are willing to get a paycut to get it. Lastly COL and tax adjustments.

There are perfectly capable engineers in this world making under 1000U$S a month, they are just not in the US.

Why wouldn't they? Any "sane" company out there will cut your salary as soon as they find a good excuse to do so. Working from home VS working from the office is the perfect excuse. Productivity doesn't matter because if you go below the minimum bar, you are lay off.

As a counterexample, my company pays us 3€ per day that we WFH in order to compensate for using personal resources. They are also paying for necessary equipment such as office chair, monitor, etc.

Than again I presume almost everyone in this thread is speaking about American companies, not that it doesn't happen elsewhere, but generally these (as you put it, "sane") company stories tend to be in the US.

This is a great point, particularly considering here in the US we've lost the ability to claim deductions on a home office if we're a company employee, as of 2018.

I've worked remotely for a long time, and have accepted the reality of increased electric bills, but I'm sure this was a surprise to some.

There may be exceptions in hot climates with AC, but I strongly suspect that the far bigger cost for people is now those who need an additional room for work rather than those with a somewhat higher utility bill or footing the cost of a new desk chair.

Continual draw for external monitors and PCs adds up. Anecdotal, but I know quite a few devs in this area had a pretty easy time fitting a desk into their master bedroom when needed.

Some companies don’t want attrition, particularly considering that there is a “shortage of qualified engineers” which is a political way of saying the software industry is underpaid already.

> there is a "shortage of qualified engineers"

Do we still believe this is true? I mean, if that were true, then why Google (probably the IT company in need of the most talented engineers out there) is thinking about applying a measure that will scare away their most talented engineers? It doesn't hold.

If there were a "shortage of qualified engineers", Google would have already said "all of our engineers can work from home if they want to. The ones who want to work from our offices can do so as well". I mean, that's the best strategy to keep and attract the best of the best, isn't it?

> Do we still believe this is true?

No, hence the rest of the sentence:

> which is a political way of saying the software industry is underpaid already

To be clear, it's FAANG who are saying there is a shortage of qualified engineers in their campaign to procure more foreign labor, but really this means they don't want to have to pay domestic engineers what they're worth (they want more H1-B visas to increase the supply and thus decrease the unit cost of engineers--with the nice bonus that H1-B holders are more easily abused because the employer has the power to effectively have these holders deported).

> is thinking about applying a measure that will scare away their most talented engineers? It doesn't hold.

A couple of possibilities:

1. Google is fallible

2. Google may be exceptional in the software industry (e.g., they may be okay with some attrition because they're playing a longer game than others in the industry, or perhaps because they already pay top-tier salaries and don't believe attrition will affect them)

Because whoever is imposing the salary reduction is not the person who will suffer the consequences of the company not having good engineers. They're likely high fiving due to meeting their KPI.

there's still shitton of skilled people that are interested in working for Google

This might be a good heuristic if we were talking about a factory job, but this is a job at a tech company. Competition for talent is pretty fierce, a good enough reason not to cut someone's salary is that it's likely they can go elsewhere and make what they're making now, plus a signing bonus.

Less the costs of transferring jobs.

The industry has done everything in its power to try and retain people through disincentives (interview processes, on boarding process, expectations of often absurd spinup to productivity times, etc.) while not focusing on the incentives (increased pay, more time off, better work life balance, etc.). All of this, acting as sort of collusion agreement proxy to reduce poaching across the industry, makes it less attractive to jump ship and businesses know that.

Spending the time to update my resume, market it a bit, deal with a mixture of mostly sweatshops with some reasonable employers mixed in, and a few actual good employers hiring processes (recruiter spam, LC gauntlets, full day technical interviews) and often employers expecting you to clairvoyantly know their idiosyncrasies (internal infrastructure, business processes, pre-existing code bases and dozens of arbitrary dependencies they chose and worked with for years)--all of which businesses pretend aren't costs and externalize on employees, makes it less attractive.

Let's add in the mix of normal/traditional job switches: meeting and meshing with new coworkers, changing your commute which may not be insignificant, overhead of switching and moving your benefits packages around, delays for building/taking time off, new uncertainties/risks about stability, etc. and suddenly, that sign-on bonus with the near same package doesn't look so attractive.

Anymore, for me to even consider jumping ship I'd need a pretty hefty sign-on bonus just to deal with the rest that will turn into lost personal time and stress. I really need a significant TC bump and hopefully, better work/life balance and/or a combination of my current employer TC degrading due to increased demand, hours, stress, stagnant growth, etc. otherwise, industry has created so many disincentive barriers that I'll stay where I am.

Maybe it's not as tiresome/costly for some, but it certainly is for me.

I used to believe the tech industry was better than other industries.

> Competition for talent is pretty fierce, a good enough reason not to cut someone's salary is that it's likely they can go elsewhere and make what they're making now, plus a signing bonus

I really hope that scenario will happen. IT companies tend to repeat what Google, Amazon, and other tech giants do; so I expect most IT companies will follow Google regarding the topic we are discussing here. I hope am wrong.

Pissing off your employees and finding excuses to cut salary is what a "sane" company does? Sounds short sighted at best.

It's quoted ("sane"). I meant: most successful companies maximize for profit, they usually don't care about employees. So the context here is "sane: from an economic point of view".

> Sounds short sighted at best.

I would say so, but history says otherwise (e.g., Amazon)

Companies are finally accepting that covid is here to stay and they're adjusting their game plan accordingly. The laid-back attitude was a PR stunt to look cool and caring. With things still getting worse, it's clear that this isn't going to end soon, so companies are going to drop the nice guy act and revert to the usual expectation of "in-office, heads-down, do what it takes to make that happen"

If Google felt that WFH had no negative effect on productivity, they could go the route of Twitter and others. The C-level clearly disagrees that this arrangement is ideal for the company, and are disincentivizing it with pay cuts.

I think that the c suite makes these decisions on a much more emotional basis than they let on.

Honestly, I think they’re sad seeing their big, expensive office spaces not being fully utilized, and want to be able around and physically see workers working.

Current management practices are very inefficient. When not actively engaging with subordinates, most of the rest of their time is finger fiddling (meetings and what-not with other managers and such take up the remainder of their time, but those meetings themselves are usually not as productive as they would let on). They need subs in seats or they'll have to admit how inefficient their job is.

Are you sure it's that simple?

Google was previously known in the wider world for imposing longer than average work days under the guise of "you love it here at the office we have pingpong and rock climbing".

It wasn't about extracting productivity, it was about imposing culture.

> Google was previously known in the wider world for imposing longer than average work days under the guise of "you love it here at the office we have pingpong and rock climbing".

Honesty, in my experience this impression is just desperate cope from people with worse work environments. My time at Google was the easiest/most relaxing of my career by far. Hell, that's why I left.

But whenever people would ask me about all the flashy perks and I'd confirm we had them, 100% of the time they'd follow up by _telling_ me (not asking): "they work you like a dog though". It was an early and dramatic lesson in how powerfully people are chained to the just-world fallacy: their emotional incontinence was severe enough that it literally prevented them from conceiving of a work environment that was simply more pleasant than theirs.

Google's perk-filled environment doesn't need to be explained by anything but golden handcuffs + productivity boosts from having recreation/convenience onsite.

Hey hey—I didn't say one way or the other whether it was a good thing or a bad thing.

But I've been in and out of Google (Waterloo). They were there long, long hours often. Just the same, people seemed happy and fulfilled.

I don't think I would be—I covet my time. But I recognize that it wasn't designed around me, so whatever.

It's a fact of the process though: Google wanted people in the office longer, so they installed resources to keep people in the office longer. In that way, it's not overly surprising to me that they're trying to get people back into the office. Similarly with Apple: they didn't build that big fancy ring for nothing.

> Hey hey—I didn't say one way or the other whether it was a good thing or a bad thing. But I've been in and out of Google (Waterloo). They were there long, long hours often. Just the same, people seemed happy and fulfilled.

"Imposing" in your original comment is doing a lot of work here. Creating an environment that benefits your employees and allows them to be happier, more fulfilled, _and_ more productive doesn't quite fit the framing of being "imposed" upon.

You could just as well say that companies who allow remote work are "imposing" longer hours/more productivity on those for whom a flexible schedule is a better fit. But that renders the point meaningless.

But they do impose it. The 40-hour workweek was a hard fought-for standard. I would call anything above that standard as imposing. It's not a rare concept. It's why billing for overtime at an increased rate is common practice—because the extra time spent is an imposition.

Depending which team you're on, just work west coast hours from Waterloo. No one will notice.

> My time at Google was the easiest/most relaxing of my career by far. Hell, that's why I left.

Would you mind if I reach out to you? I'd be curious to learn more about your life/career path, if you're willing to share.

Sure, how can I reach you

definitelynotmmmmmbop [at] gmail [dot] com

Imposing culture and keeping people around at all hours was in the service of company productivity. At least that is their philosophy. It really is that simple.

I can confirm that we happily worked nitty days for a very long time and the perks helped keep us happy and sane. After some number of years though, your personal well of energy starts to dry up and no amount of weird crap in a fridge is going to solve it. We were very productive until that point though.

> in the service of company productivity

This is the only thing I question, given the mix of data suggesting the opposite is true. Stanford ran a project about it some time ago: https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs201/projects/crunc...

That may boil down to execution, though. That project emerged out of pretty scathing posts from the boiler room programming environments of EA. I'm pretty confident Google operates very differently, and probably learned from those calamities.

I doubt it.

We know that over work reduces creativity and productivity. Hell, as an outsider you can practically see this in what Google offers; they’ve totally lost their way and keep rehashing the same products in repeatedly inferior ways.

Rather, I think that they feel that it’s more productive or that it gives them more control. Neither of which is a rational argument

Given what we know about longer hours and productivity, plus Google’s low retention figures, I’m going to go with the latter.

What do we know about Google's retention figures?

Can’t speak post Covid, but last time I checked they weren’t terribly impressive. IIRC the median was 1.1 years. Facebook usually tops the FAANG charts for retention, but the numbers still aren’t great.

Would love to see some actual numbers, even pre-COVID.

(The claim is at odds with my observational data... assuming, of course, that we exclude interns and similar.)

I'd like to know that too. Anecdotally, in the past 6 months 7 people I've previously worked with on projects at Google left after having been there about 10 years.

I don't know how good the data out there is but the meme seems to be that people are moving around a lot right now. Certainly I've seen a disproportionate number of long term employees I know deciding to either retire or switch jobs.

I think people overestimate the short term impact of C-levels in these giant organizations. Google isn't run like a startup anymore. There is an existing compensation structure at place that pays employees differently based on the location they are working in. The HR and legal department has probably a pretty firm stance on assuring these structures are applied fairly and unequivocally. And if the C-suit is presented the options of cutting pay of some or raising pay of many others, we all know what a business would go for.

Really ironic given how Google isn't innovating anymore (relative to their market cap).

I'd argue the company itself isn't very productive and is just treading water with its ridiculously profitable cash cow and moat.

That's a C-suite bug.

Given the fact that they can't even put together a decent chat application it's pretty embarrassing. Hangouts was bereft of features, and the new Chat replacement adds a few more features only to be incredibly slow. Progress? Nope.

Most people I know at G are working on something related to the cash cow of "spying on people to sell them more stuff better". The number of folks working on actual hard problems seems to be very slim, though highly publicized.

One might wonder whether google employees are even creating value at this point or if they are just burning cash. What was the last product launched by Google that was a success? Which Google product hasn't gotten worse in the last 10 years? Gmail, google search, the 50 flavors of google chat, youtube, all were better 10 years ago. Maps stayed the same which is an achievement compared to any other Google products.

The C-level have had months to prepare and show data about productivity dropping and have, so far, refused to do so. At this point, they can put up or shut up. I refuse to just believe them because they say so.

The empty platitudes of “we work better together” is a giveaway that they don’t have that data.

maybe it's OK in the short term - they can keep the lights on keep current initiatives going - but it might have an impact on the process for developing new strategic initiatives. people can be 'productive' in one sense, but it might still be in the interest of the company to have some class of workers 'on site' vs WFH as a default.

I'm not saying this is definitely the case in google's situation, just... "effect on productivity" is hard to measure, and may have more than one measurement.

You're wasting your breath. It took me many years to reach this conclusion, but HN threads about Google are the official meeting place of people bitter about their failed interviews.

Just look around this thread to see how wild-eyed and frothing the conspiracy theories can get

For the record, I passed my Google interview, and they demanded that I move to NYC which I was unwilling to do. I ended up taking other work, and haven’t bothered with them since.

So perhaps don’t jump to conclusions, especially when you’re doing it to impugn other people. It’s a bad look.

> So perhaps don’t jump to conclusions, especially when you’re doing it to impugn other people. It’s a bad look.

I 100% don't doubt that there are individual people here that have irrational feelings about Google for reasons other than the one I mentioned, or that have rational-but-uncharitable feelings about them. I'm not even particularly bothered by the target: Google in 2021 has a mountain of things to answer for that I think it deserves very harsh criticism for.

But the collective IQ of HN drops about 30 points whenever they come up, far beyond the level of the general anti-big-tech attitude you generally see here. The amount of circular reasoning and comments that don't stand up to a second's scrutiny is palpably higher than in the average HN thread, and over the last almost-decade of observing this fascinating dynamic, the one constant I've noticed has been a deep and abiding bitterness. Contrast this with, say, Facebook: while they get plenty of HN hate, it's of the same type that you find anywhere, and lacks a lot of the pitiful contortions you find HNers squeezing themselves into on the topic of Google.