Posted on 02/25/2023 12:43:57 PM PST by george76
The company’s cloud unit has told employees that it will transition to a desk-sharing workspace in its five largest locations.
Employees will be encouraged to alter the days in which they’re in the office, either Monday and Wednesday or Tuesday and Thursday.
Internal documents cite slow return to office patterns and the need for “real estate efficiency.”
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Some buildings will be vacated
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new seating arrangement a title: “Cloud Office Evolution” or “CLOE,” .. . The new workspace plan is not a temporary pilot
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laid off 11,000 employees in January.
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The move comes as Google downsizes its real estate footprint amid broader cost-cutting. However, it hasn’t yet specified regions or buildings it plans on downsizing.
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Employees will generally alternate days they’re in the office, either Monday and Wednesday, or Tuesday and Thursday. They will be in two days a week, a change from the company requiring employees to come in three days a week.
“Neighborhood leads are encouraged to set norms with their teams around sharing desks, ensuring that pairings of Googlers have conversations about how they will or will not decorate the space, store personal items, and tidiness expectations.”
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employees with computer workstations will no longer have those workstations located directly under their desks, but instead will have to look up its location in a database or put in a ticket for troubleshooting.
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Employees will be discouraged from “camping” in a conference room..
As for Covid-19 .. employees will get a notification if someone in their area tests positive and reports it to Google.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
Die, Google.
Die.
Lots of organizations are doing this. It saves them a ton of money.
Welcome to the real world of business. Sucks doesn’t it.
The IT world of unicorns, mimosas and afternoon cornhole games is over.
Just how does that work? Sounds impractical. Stupid even!
when senior execs do the same we can talk....
Japanese salesmen did this decades ago. Whenever they had to be in the office, the salesman would take his rolling file cabinet from a room then find a vacant desk to work from. Afterwards, he would put back the file cabinet before leaving.
Amen. Maybe Google Employees can’t swap spit too.
Gawd, I’d hate that. Having the same desk / cubicle every day lets you settle into your rhythm easily. Changing desks would be such a distraction my efficiency writing code would plunge!
I think they should share a mouse
And a chair
For the past several years I have avoided Google like the plague.
On Brave browser I use Qwant.
Maybe enough of us stopped using them to hurt them.
Who sits on whos lap first?.
Re: Sharing desks.
Just as I was getting ready to retire and leave my last job, they announced that everyone had to take everything home from your cubicle. They had mandated at least 2 days a week in the office (maybe more now) with 3 days remote working. When they first sent us all home, as the Plandemic began, everything was remote, and they made you complete a daily, hour by hour document of what you worked on (client based, generally). We already did minute by minute case notes tied to, related to each client. Sometimes it was just documentation of a simple phone conversation. Other times they were extensive, long notes about a long, face-to-face meeting. Any supervisor could just bring up the case notes to determine what we were doing (that mindset of people not working if not in an office did not sit well with us). With the heavy caseloads, one would have to be insane to not work for hours (yes, yes, I know there are creeps who do). To me, not working while being paid is so wrong. I have met people in other jobs who believe that if you appear, show up, walk in the door, you should get paid. While some people call it the Protestant Work Ethic, me and my 6 brothers and sisters were raised Roman Catholic, and we all have the same, strong work ethic.
So, now the workplace I began describing above has no personal items, and you reserve a cubicle online. One of the huge plusses of the job was that if you were ever visiting the main office, or another outlying office, all of your work was accessible at any station. But, your own, personal workstation is no more.
I imagine that if I still worked there, I would bring in portable photo boards. The kind that fold out into three rectangles. In fact, I would make sure to have the sign I created to tweak the liberals “Large Carbon Footprints Make For Happy Trees. Besides all the jeers, every so often someone would actually want to talk about it, and I took advantage of the request to explain the good ‘ol Carbon Cycle, that 99.9999% of life on Earth is carbon-based. If they actually listened, I would educate them that not very long ago New York and Chicago were under a mile of ice, AND the ice WILL return. There is nothing we can do but adapt. I never mentioned the phrases Climate Change or Global Warming, but those that actually listened and processed basic facts knew, or eventually realized, what it is all about.
Companies tend to be fashion oriented. They’re worse than teenage girls. When I worked for General Dynamics, someone found out that the single pole supporting three terminals used by one of the phone sales companies was credited with a massive increase in productivity. The plan was to get rid of our cubicles and replace them with these three terminal poles and we’d have to stand all day. I have flat feet. It would have been my last day at work. Fortunately, enough of the critical employees said they’d quit that it didn’t happen. I mention this because companies run by men sitting in offices that look like something from a movie about a billionaire frequently make ill-considered decisions about what conditions the “little” people will be required to work in.
bkmk
We went from offices 15 x 15, to 15 x 10, to 12 x 10 to a 6 x 3 desk to a shared 6 x 3 desk over 35 years. I would have rather moved to a cheaper location.
“Ok. I’ll use the top of the desk...you can use the bottom.”
Cool story. You’ve done your part, man.
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