Hmmm, what am I reading?
Of course it's a solution for a problem– the problem is that employees need to get to work every morning. The solution offered by Google (and others) is much better than what large companies in areas other than SV do, which is to not worry about how employees get to work. What those tech companies do is a significantly better solution because a) it's better for than environment (less cars on the road), b) it's better for the employees (driving is stressful), c) it's better for the company (people get work done on the bus).
What would be your solution to the problem?
"Public transportation" is not a valid option, because first of all in the US it is a travesty; and even if it were amazing, that wouldn't solve the problem. In countries with great public transportation, people who work for companies who don't have offices in deeply urban areas still have to get to work by their own means.
Google (and others) need to bring their employees to work on their massive privately owned campus; it's not the city's preoccupation to get them there. Driving is stressful, therefore Google decides to offer a shuttle service. It doesn't seem like a "kludgey work around" to me, rather like a normal consequence of a free market.
The only other thing I see is to have every employee live within a 5 mile radius of the company so they can walk/bike there. Some companies do that (Foxconn), but surprisingly it goes against the modern era notion of "personal freedom".
Plenty of them don't need to get to work every morning, and don't need to live within commuting distance of SV, to do their jobs. That's a company policy decision, not a law of nature.
The only way to avoid the communication overhead is to have one person working on each component. But since coordinating the components involves communication, you can only have one component. So sitting alone typing away is fine if you're working on a one person project, but if you want to do something bigger, it pays to have everyone sitting together with a few hours overlapping. (I'm not a big fan of being awake in the morning :)
Needless to say, I don't really agree with this. First, ‘half communication and half typing code’ leaves no time for individual creative problem solving, which, unless you're stuck writing the nth me-too implementation of the same CRUD form-filler, is essential. Yesterday's ‘open-plan’ discussion <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5767414>; is apropos. Half communication? It wouldn't be half if everyone would just STFU long enough to get some work done for a change.
Second, I dispute the idea that relevant technical communication needs to be, or even can be, done primarily face-to-face or verbally. We have writing and mathematical notations for good reason. Feel free to pop over to a site like Vocaroo and comprehensibly present Tarjan's algorithm, say, or the stdio API, or the VPUNPCKHDQ instruction.
And Google haven't solved that problem apart from a very narrow subset of workers, all of whom are Google employees. Thus, it's just a kludge.
I reckon Google is more than capable of designing a better public transit system - they'd have to be allowed to use location data. But there's nothing in it for Google to do this. They'd just have to battle against entrenched industries and they'd end up with something that's not as good for their workers (although better for the planet and for everyone else) than what they have now.
...
"Employees need to eat while on the job, and Apple's cafeteria is only for Apple employees.
They haven't solved that problem apart for a very narrow subset of workers, all of whom are Apple employees. Thus it's just a kludge.
I reckon Apple is more than capable of designing a better meal system– they'd have to be allowed to use dietary preference data. But there's nothing in it for Apple to do this.
They'd just have to battle against entrenched industries and they'd end up with something that's not as good for their workers (although better for the planet and for everyone else) than what they have now."
Google is doing what's best for its employees. If there was a public transportation system capable of doing it instead, I'm sure the stockholders' money could be put to better use.
I'm not making an anti-Google post here. I'm saying that there are a bunch of companies who could be doing interesting stuff but they can't because of entrenched industries and weird regulations.
There is a lot of discussion about the morality of the current wealth disparity in the united states. Google will need to decide for themselves if creating their own separate bus system and semi private airport [2] rather than working to improve the one that everybody else shares falls under the motto "don't be evil".
[1] http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/2012-13-EN/pdf/Enacted/BudgetSumma... [2] http://paloalto.patch.com/groups/politics-and-elections/p/na...
[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-21/google-2-4-rate-sho... [2] http://dailypicksandflicks.com/2012/04/26/monkey-fairness-ex...
I think the real issue is that people feel especially entitled to a share of Google and its employee's earnings, which still makes no sense to me. If by "neighbors" you mean the local community, then I don't see why Google owes anything in particular to the local community. They already pay local, state and federal taxes. If a rich guy moved next door to me, I wouldn't expect him to contribute more to the local community just because he happened to live near me. Furthermore, trying to extract rent from companies will fail in the long run since they are free to move within the US.
Or out of the U.S., for that matter. IBM is thought to now have more employees in India than in the U.S.:
I started the process of trying to cut a door in the wall between my restaurant and nightclub in February 2011. It is now February 2012, and we still don't have the necessary permits and have not yet begun construction. If we have a door in that wall -- and are allowed to let people walk through it -- before 2013, we will consider ourselves lucky.
(From: http://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/02/confiscating-your-ice-cream-...
Also -- about jwz: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jwz )
If you think SF is expensive try London I found that some ex council 2 bed flats near my office in London where going for £3/4 Million Pounds thats over a Million dollars, if you wanted a nice place in a nicer area say Fitzrovia you are looking at 3 or 4 million pounds
But that's not really Google's fault. People would moan if Google donated buses to the city. People would moan if Google optimised bus routes or traffic signalling or road markings or anything.
Having read about the problems JWZ has just putting a door in I can understand why Google has chosen to not bother grinding through that opaque bureaucracy and has just installed a fleet of buses.