Google To Cut Down on Employee Laptops, Services and Staplers for 'Multi-Year' Savings (cnbc.com) 134
Google's finance chief Ruth Porat recently said in a rare companywide email that the company is making cuts to employee services. From a report: "These are big, multi-year efforts," Porat said in a Friday email titled: "Our company-wide OKR on durable savings." Elements of the email were previously reported by the Wall Street Journal. In separate documents viewed by CNBC, Google said it's cutting back on fitness classes, staplers, tape, and the frequency of laptop replacements for employees. One of the company's important objectives for 2023 is to "deliver durable savings through improved velocity and efficiency." Porat said in the email. "All PAs and Functions are working toward this," she said, referring to product areas.
Good advice & messaging. (Score:5, Funny)
Cut down on purchases of laptops to make the company save money and run better. Thanks for the advice Dell. Oh, and cancel that PO I sent.
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I guarantee that cutting down on purchases of laptops was not Dell's advice.
But it makes sense for most employees I guess, computer tech is advancing slower than it used to. For most purposes halfway current machines are good enough. Halfway current meaning Zen or anything post-Skylake.
Rent seeking behavior (Score:2)
Re:Good advice & messaging. (Score:4, Informative)
I agree, a current Laptop that has been taken care of should be good for 5 and probably 10 years. This was posted using a Thinkpad T420. It does everything I need. But that of course depends upon the OS on the Laptop. Windows 11 (and maybe 10) is a no-go. But to me that is a plus.
Wonder how that will work for Apple People ? Seems every 5 or so years Apple changes the CPU. Hopefully the M1 will stick around for a while.
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I still have an old Apple MacBook Pro late 2011 model that is humming right along.
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macOS Ventura seems to be only supporting Apple devices for the last five years (It came out in 2022)
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213264
With some apps requiring you to be on the newest macOS, that isn't a good sign. While the hardware might be lasting long enough, the OS is creating a forced obsoletion / forced upgrade requirements for more professional work.
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By post Skylake do you mean ix 11xxx or ix 7xxx?
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Cut down on purchases of laptops to make the company save money and run better. Thanks for the advice Dell. Oh, and cancel that PO I sent.
Chromebooks in every school. You know you sell way too much hardware when you can make a mockery of selling hardware.
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Can't figure out this FP branch, but maybe at this point it's become a Funny joke about the uselessness of Chromebooks? At least I have yet to figure out a good use for the one I bought last year... But that was a Lenovo Duet. I don't know if Dell makes any Chromebooks, and my last experiences on the Dell website have rendered me too terrified to check.
Am I hoping for someone to say "To use a Chromebook usefully, all you need to do is..."
PROFIT!
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Think of it as a cheap light-weight terminal. Great for accessing web interfaces
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Nope, not good for that, either. Sorry. Partly confusion between touch and keyboard, but some of that may be keyboard-specific problems for this model...
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Well mine works great for that, though these days I use it as basically a monitor/keyboard for my CNC running on a rPi
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Chromebook's only use as far as I can tell is making a nice portable Linux workstation for light tasks. Got two I put Mint on as writing implements when I'm on the go and don't wanna risk losing / breaking a 'real' laptop. I'll toss a Chromebook into the motorcycle saddlebag and take off without hesitation. Not so much my main laptop workstation.
Components supported by Linux (Score:2)
Chromebook's only use as far as I can tell is making a nice portable Linux workstation for light tasks.
The Chromebook brand is a convenient way to make sure the components are supported under Linux.
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"I'll toss a Chromebook into the motorcycle saddlebag and take off without hesitation."
Why? Whatever destroys that saddlebag will most likely destroy you too. Might as well carry the good computer.
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"I'll toss a Chromebook into the motorcycle saddlebag and take off without hesitation."
Why? Whatever destroys that saddlebag will most likely destroy you too. Might as well carry the good computer.
As much about the destination as it is about the saddlebag. When I'm riding the two wheelers I don't tend to be super careful at either end of the trip. And I've been known to lose objects a lot bigger than a laptop it road stops. I tend to put my concentration into the road when I'm on a bike, rather than my possessions. So I've got a hang-up about taking cheap stuff with me when I travel that way.
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The Duet is a great android tablet. I use it for media on-the-go or in bed (ebooks, videos, etc). The keyboard means that I can do some work on it when I'm out of my house, though the small screen limits this. The crostini linux VM lets me do simple linux stuff though I'll use it as a dumb terminal for anything bigger (if you want to use the linux VM, get more than 4G of ram).
It's cheap enough that I'll toss it in my car when I travel and don't obsess about losing or damaging it; no critical data is sto
Dedicated banking computer ... (Score:4, Insightful)
At least I have yet to figure out a good use for the one I bought last year
Do a factory reset to clean it up, check for updates, and then use it for accessing the websites of your banks and credit cards. Absolutely nothing else, ever. Then on your regular Windows, Mac or Linux systems, never, ever, visit your bank and credit card websites. Never, ever, let anyone else use it.
I find a US$200-ish chromebook handles this pretty well, the only reason to replace it is the eventual software updates stopping.
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Cut down on purchases of laptops to make the company save money and run better. Thanks for the advice Dell. Oh, and cancel that PO I sent.
My recent laptop "upgrade" from a Lenovo to a similar newer model Lenovo was a downgrade. Mostly due to windows 11 I think, but the hardware compatibility and audio behavior (trying to get audio to work in meetings was and is a comedy of errors) has made quality of life with the work laptop much worse.
I "use" my laptops, as in I make them do a lot of heavy computation and hold a lot of local data for that computation (no, I'm not doing AI nonsense), but they seem to hold up fine these days for longer than t
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Free lunch is now mac and cheese.
Re: Good advice & messaging. (Score:2)
Bathrooms will be locked fron 9am to 3pm
Re: Good advice & messaging. (Score:2)
Also, we are charging an extra 2 dollars for Snapple that comes in those wide mouth bottles.
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A lot of companies replace them too often. 3 years is too short a time really, a laptop can easily last longer than that. Especially when most employees don't use the laptop for much beyond basic office apps and the browser. And yet I see some companies refreshing the laptops every year or two.
Not the staplers (Score:5, Funny)
That's a good way to get your building burned down. [giphy.com]
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That's a good way to get your building burned down. [giphy.com]
Just get everyone the right one [swingline.com] and no one gets hurt.
also we cut janitors so we need to spray storage B (Score:2)
also we cut janitors so we need to spray storage room B as part your tasks.
Not a problem, bring mine from home ... (Score:2)
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It's kind of interesting, since that movie, staplers and massive reams of printouts seem to have disappeared from todays office desks. Well except from boomer desks. If there's even a corporate office/desk.
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but due to reorgs I now have 8 bosses and I have fill out long time cards each time I work on an different project.
And don't get me started on the TPS reports.
Re: Not the staplers (Score:2)
I was coming here to say âoeCue the Milton memesâ.
Thank you.
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I believe you have my stapler.
Ah they grow up (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ah they grow up (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, remember when Google was considered to be a cool place to work? You know, with all that "free" food, "free" commuter buses, freedom to work on your own projects 1 day a week, and nap pods?
Congratulations, Googlers... you're no longer special. Welcome to the corporate IT hellscape where the rest of us have been working for the past 15 years.
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The loss of free perks was bound to happen. There is only so long one can waste shareholders money. Its all fun and games while money rolls in, but after the gravy train stops, cutbacks are to follow.
Re:Ah they grow up (Score:5, Interesting)
Attracting and retaining the best employees (and denying them to you competitors) is hardly a waste of shareholder's money.
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Well, you have to be pretty high.. (Score:5, Insightful)
...to start policing the use of ADHESIVE TAPE in order to save money in one of the biggest IT companies on the planet.
Like... How much were they spending on fucking tape anyway? Was it gold-plated or something?
Re:Well, you have to be pretty high.. (Score:4, Funny)
I assume the staplers were made of titanium with carbon fiber outer casings branded by Supreme.
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I saw a major international company doing just that. When it's time to start nickel and dimeing the savings things can get weird. I have seen the notices reading "too many paper towels are being used, if this does not stop we will stop supplying paper towels!", and it was not just from some over zealous facilities manager. Generally from the top the word goes down to save money, the budget is cut, and then the local groups need to figure out how to stay within that smaller budget.
Are chromebooks that expensive? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Are chromebooks that expensive? (Score:5, Interesting)
A sharp sales clerk sold me a Chromebook last year. Ever since then I've been trying to find something it does well. No luck so far. It sort of works, but it does everything so badly... Most of my computers have a niche, but so far the Chromebook's main niche is restaurant reviews, where the low-res camera is sort of a twisted advantage.
Any hints on how to use a Lenovo Duet as an Android tablet? I had one of those a few years back, and it was pretty good for some smartphone apps.
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The Lenovo Duet is unfortunately one of the shittier Chromebooks.
Still though, unless you're a person that lives inside Chrome and needs little else, even an awesome Chromebook will probably still suck compared to anything x86...
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Sorry to hear that, even if my experience supports the statement... I should have learned the first time I looked at a machine with detachable keyboard years ago, but I was hoping lessons had been learned by now.
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The Lenovo Duet is unfortunately one of the shittier Chromebooks.
As with all the Lenovo Chromebooks, the line is confusing and complicated unless you look at the specs in detail.
There are different model Duets - 4GB or 8GB of RAM. I've used both and the 8GB one is vastly more usable and pleasant to use - I actually got one for myself at work but it was yoinked instantly but someone who had a better use case for it (and I didn't like the detachable keyboard).
Most of our work laptops are Lenovo Chromebook IdeaPads. I just discovered a few of the older ones are Intel i3 CP
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A Chromebook is fine for some things, everything it does can be done better by something else but the point of it is its cheap, and has a decent battery life. This is useful for school if you are writing a few essays, and looking up some information.
I bought my daughter a mid range computers for school, because I don't like buying rubbish, the problem is that she was a child, carries it to school and broke them. The second time I got damage insurance, but by the time I sent it back to Acer for the 3rd time
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Chromebooks aren't aimed at developers so I'm guessing they don't use them that much.
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Chromebooks aren't aimed at developers so I'm guessing they don't use them that much.
They should be fine for web developers.
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For testing maybe, but they don't have the ability to run an IDE
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For testing maybe, but they don't have the ability to run an IDE
Many Chromebooks can run linux apps.
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Re: Are chromebooks that expensive? (Score:2)
Dog got sick on its own dog food (Score:2)
There are some that cost well over $1,000. That is a WTF level, I always thought who would buy that outside of Google. And Google doing so was viewed as an eating your own dog food thing. So I guess the dog got sick on its own dog food.
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When I think of non-engineering roles I think of:
- managers
- scrum masters (yes our company managed to make scrum master a separate role)
- business analysts
- product owners
- etc...
In my experience most of those individuals do not need much in terms of hardware these days they can do almost everything in a web browser. Google has to be usi
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Or does Google itself not find Chromebooks useful? That certainly seems to be the case. This is too damn funny.
A large percentage of Google employees use Chromebooks. The new policy actually mandates Chromebooks for everyone except engineers. Engineers get Chromebooks by default, but can request a Macbook or a PC laptop (Debian Linux or Windows) if they fill out a form explaining why a Chromebook won't work. This isn't because Google engineers need something else for their work, though, it's because engineers get annoyed at being forced to use anything other than their preferred tools. Google's internal development
So, essentially, (Score:3)
They're cutting down on pretty much all job perks and other reasons to work for them.
What a pity.
NEXT!
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So "a day in the life of a google engineer" social media videos are going to be more work and tech focused?
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At least they're gonna be way more boring now. If I wanna see that, I can take a video of my own work.
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They're cutting down on pretty much all job perks and other reasons to work for them.
If you are working at your current job because of free staplers, free tape, laptop replacements, or even fitness classes, then your life must be pretty dull...
My current job provides all that, along with various events all year long (usually food related, sometimes sports related, ...) and for the most part, it seems to only attract people just fresh out of uni, who think this is a dream come true, and are usually single. As soon as you get an actual life outside work, have actual hobbies, and/or kids, thos
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These benefits are actually pretty valuable for two reasons.
First there's the tax-advantage Someone working for Google in California might be paying a marginal tax rate of ~33% between state and federal. If they get a free lunch at work, instead of buying it out, they save not only the $25 for a lunch out in the Bay Area, but also the $13 of tax that they would have paid on the income that bought that $25 meal. Same story with a company phone plan. Getting your company to pay $1000/year for your phone/p
Bean Counters (Score:3)
Funny that they want to save a few dollars here and there, when eliminating a single high-end engineering position would save them probably 300k...
Whatever happened to enabling engineering flow? Wait until they start gunning for the ping pong tables...
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https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/2... [cnbc.com]
"Pichai dodged employee questions asking about cost-cutting executive compensation. Pichai brought in total pay last year of $6.3 million, while other top executives made more than $28 million."
4 legs good, 2 legs bad?
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Re:Bean Counters (Score:5, Informative)
They paid him $281 million in 2019, [sec.gov] so maybe he's doing okay for himself.
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Remember when top Google execs pulled in $200M/yr and that was unprecedented, unparalleled, and seemed to be the pinnacle of earth-shattering executive pay insanity? It was a simpler time.
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I don't know what a typical engineer gets in the USA by your calculation its around 300,000 from here https://www.indeed.com/career/... [indeed.com] its $108,625 so more on the lines of 60 times more but the top executives made 28 million so their salaries are 280 times more, and an engineer is not a typical worker. So fire 1 top executive and hire 280 engineers sound like a way better plan.
As for staplers we just have 1 shared one at work, its not like I spend a significant amount of my time stapling, maybe in total 1
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I was guesstimating overhead, benefits employer taxes, etc., plus the fact that Google used to have competitive salaries on the higher end.
Also Google tends to have offices in higher cost of living areas, so I wouldn't go with the national average (the US has a massive disparity in cost of living depending on the city/region/state). If someone is trying to use national average to argue your salary should be lower, and you live in a higher cost of living area, that's a pretty good clue that you should be sw
Re:Bean Counters (Score:5, Insightful)
...when eliminating a single high-end engineering position would save them probably 300k...
Or get rid of a single useless building no longer needed to house remote workers, and save hundreds of millions of dollars. Most of the other perks then go away naturally, as they are no longer needed.
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Whatever happened to enabling engineering flow? Wait until they start gunning for the ping pong tables...
They'll keep them. However their use will count as your break.
Re: Bean Counters (Score:2)
Using a $100 bill to light a cigar (Score:2)
I can't see a point to playpen balls generally but, in this case, it's partly sunk cost at this point and a bigger problem if they're hiring people who aren't housebroken.
Maintenance, insurance, flu virus transmission, ...
It was nothing more than showing they had FU money. Linux a stock millionaire of the mid 1920s using a $100 bill to light a cigar. The fantasy can only last so long.
Leaner, more efficient (Score:3)
f-ed company (Score:4, Interesting)
This reads like an anonymous post on that site that covered companies that were failing during the dotbomb era.
Re: f-ed company (Score:2)
Miss it. The guys name was Pud, as I recall.
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This reads like an anonymous post on that site that covered companies that were failing during the dotbomb era.
Many of the perks and benefits sounded reminiscent of the early life of companies destined for that site. Its amazing what happens when you have to fund things through cashflow not investor monies.
Yes, nothing says savings like... (Score:4, Insightful)
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You'd be amazing at how many companies think / do this
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I also seriously doubt that they would skimp on engineering machines. It is good not to waste the money and the environment. I recently was required to refresh my laptop because it is no longer under warranty (over 5 years old). It is perfectly good laptop which is re-used for so
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...giving a developer you're paying $80/hour a 5-year-old computer that takes 30 minutes to do a build.
Nobody builds on a laptop.
(a) Those working on internal code build on Forge, a massive build cluster that intelligently caches intermediate build outputs from all of its tens of thousands of users and reuses them to optimize builds. Even the compilers and other build tools are checked into and built by the build system, so Forge can track the full transitive dependencies of every cached output and it never gets confused and fails to rebuild something it should. It's actually pretty amazing. Enormous syst
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I remember during the HD transition era, some game development houses intentionally made programmers do all their work with normal SD televisions. You know, just to remind them of what gamers actually had to use to play the games. There's nothing worse than trying to read subtitles that are too small and blurry to actually read.
So... could you explain to me why a 5-year-old computer with eight 4GHz cores and 64GB of memory still takes 30 minutes to make that build?
A bit short-sighted (Score:3)
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Best way to deal with that for small-ticket items, I think, is to simply issue an allowance. Here's the money you get to cover this sort of stuff; buy what you want with it, no questions asked. Maybe route it all through a list of stuff you can buy so you can't just keep it for yourself. If you need more, it's possible to get it, but at that point you need to start explaining why you need the money. Choose the right size allowance, neither too much or too little, and it would work pretty well.
So What Wouldya Say (Score:3)
Red stapler protection time (Score:2)
Red stapler protection time
https://media.giphy.com/media/... [giphy.com]
Overpowered Work Laptops (Score:3)
The tech companies I've worked for have always issued me super-duper top-of-the-line laptops, which I then use for email, Microsoft Office, and to VNC into Linux virtual machines. To be fair, I do in fact use enormous amounts of computing power in my day-to-day job, but this happens on compute farms and virtual machines, rather than my Windows laptop.
I don't know how things work in the software world, but I would guess that it's a similar situation with people being issued computers that are way more powerful (and way more expensive) than what they need.
These are not even "large" expenses (Score:5, Interesting)
Looking at the SEC reports, office activities would be nowhere near the top of Google's expenses. The largest group, by far, is Cost of revenues, which includes things like server upgrades, or money paid to partners, i.e.: ad sense, youtube, etc.
https://abc.xyz/investor/stati... [abc.xyz]
And even human host is miniscule in comparison. It is about 1/3th to 1/4th of those taking the second position.
And Google operates at around 25%-30% profit margins. That means they can actually afford to double the current number of employees, and still make a nice profit.
And that begs the question: What is the reason of these layoffs and benefit cuts?
It is definitely not about costs today...
Re:These are not even "large" expenses (Score:4, Interesting)
Workers have been gaining too much power thanks to the pandemic. Capitalism depends on the reserve armor of labour in order to keep workers under control, knowing that they can be replaced at any time. The tech sector needs to increase the unemployment rate so that they can regain control over the remaining employees.
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Precisely.
FED openly complains about "too low unemployment":
https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]
Last year we really had the workers market. Anyone with basic skills and a modicum of work ethics could secure a good job. Salaries were rising, and companies were fighting over us.
All of a sudden monetary policy (read: old money and wall street folks) became upset, and they broke the economy on purpose.
Again, except for a few really struggling companies, none of the tech workers had to be laid off. All those layoff
rats begin jumping ship (Score:2)
Makes sense (Score:2)
I briefly worked in IT support in Google and their hardware refresh policies were insane: one laptop every 2 years, one phone every year.
I've seen sales reps complaining that they had to run their powerpoint presentations on a 2 years old MacBook Pro.
Staplers ?!? (Score:2)
I was told (Score:2)
Re:Warning! (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me educate you, son. See, here at Slashdot, we don't care if an article is paywalled. We can always find the article somewhere else. It is what being a nerd is all about.
Class dismissed.
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Or often even on the same "paywalled" site with the right script/cookie/XHR options blocked ;-)
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"here at Slashdot, we don't care if an article is paywalled. We can always find the article somewhere else."
Actually, if you have chosen the correct browser and appropriate addons, there are no paywalls. But if you just use what Big Brother gave you, fuggedaboudit.
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Class is always multipart. Just can't give them ALL the information. Gotta make them work for it.
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Why should I visit a news site just to have to do all the work myself?
Fuck the paywall, and fuck making me do extra work to get around it.