Google To Begin Reopening Offices July 6, Will Let Employees Expense $1,000 for Equipment While Telecommuting (cnet.com) 44
Google CEO Sundar Pichai told employees Tuesday that the search giant is targeting July 6 to reopen offices for workers that want to come back to in person. The return will be gradual, starting at about 10% building capacity, he said. The company aims to ramp up to 30% capacity by September. From a report: For people who want to continue working from home, the company will allow employees to expense up to $1,000 for equipment and furniture, including things such as standing desks and monitors. Google has been more vocal about employees returning to the workplace while other tech giants have touted permanent work from home options. Pichai's remarks to staff come days after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the social networking giant will allow some employees to work from home permanently. He said about half of Facebook's workforce could be remote over the next five to 10 years. Twitter made a similar announcement earlier this month. CEO Jack Dorsey also extended the policy to his other company, mobile-payments firm Square, last week.
Only $1k?! (Score:1)
It never ceases to amaze me how companies expect first rate performance from cut rate hardware. If your employees are using Craigslist specials for laptops while working at home, what do you think they're doing while the hourglass spins?
For my own work, I have insisted on having the best hardware. Why? Because my time is valuable - the faster my computer responds, the more I can get done in a given timeframe. Why a company can't understand that a $1k difference in hardware can make a $10-$30k differe
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do you have to use there laptop? if so then $1000 can be good for display + desk
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That's a nice subsidy for home computing to add things on, not buy a whole new set,
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If you work for Google, you're already getting decent hardware to work from home with.
Per the article (second paragraph):
"For people who want to continue working from home, Pichai said the company will allow employees to expense up to $1,000 for equipment and furniture, such as standing desks and ergonomic chairs. "
Incidentally, my company (not Google) gave all employees 1K in March to help pay for any WFH-related expenses. Now that it's looking like we'll be WFH for at least till 2021, we're being allowed
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Standing for long periods is far worse for you than sitting.
For $200, I bought an adjustable desk [amazon.com]. It has an electric motor and can transition between sitting and standing in about 20 seconds.
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Which is why you need to get yourself a decent stool to use with your standing desk.
Seriously, I worked for almost 20 years at a drafting table and had a cushioned stool with a back and arm rests that kept me at about the same height sitting as standing. That was far more comfortable, more productive, and healthier than sitting at a regular desk with a good chair. The adjustable desks I've seen just don't give me enough real estate to spread ou
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Well google is much better than the fortune 500 company I work for. I ordered a $30 US cable so I can hook up my work PC to my monitor at home. Response - DENIED
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$30 for a $4 HDMI cable?
I don't blame them for denying it.
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You have to go order items (even pens) through the company's own internal procurement site.
Many large companies do the same, order from their approved vendors than going to any 'tom, dick or harry'
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I don't get it. If you order it from their internal site, I would expect that means they are paying for it. If you have to pay for it, then why order it through them for $30 and not order a $4 cable from some place else?
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$1K is generous for ACCESSORIES! (Score:2)
Most tech companies will issue you a corporate laptop. Many even let you pick between a Windows laptop or a Macbook Pro. It just makes much more sense to build standard images with all the software the company uses already installed on them, and blast that onto every machine they deploy. On the Mac side, it seems like JAMF Pro is pretty much the industry standard for accomplishing this, especially since Apple declared it a "no no" to use sector-by-sector copies of disk images. (Doesn't play nicely with F
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" $1,000 buys you all of that plus a basic desk and computer chair."
Unless you are piggybacking on a corporate buy and get their big discount, $1000 will get you a chair worth having.
Remember, you'll spend 1/4 of your life in that chair.
re: computer chairs (Score:2)
I don't necessarily agree with that.... I mean, each person is different with what they find comfortable. But I've been very happy spending up to 8 hours a day sitting in a computer chair I paid about $130 for at OfficeMax, when it was on sale. (I think it may have normally cost $199,)
I also worked for a company who used these rolling chairs from IKEA that couldn't have cost much .... but used bungee cords to make up the seat and the back. They were pretty comfy too.
How about $0.00?!? (Score:2)
I'd *gladly* buy all my own work equipment if I can pick it out myself. What I end up with instead is either some hand-me-down laptop that sat on a secretary's desk for 5 years, the absolute cheapest HP, or something gimmicky that some manager thought nerds would want - like a 21" laptop that I have to carry on a plane three days a week, for example.
Flamesuit on: My current client insists that I use their MacBook Pro. I fucking hate it. Give me that hand-me-down laptop and let me put Linux Mint on it.
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I presume the laptop is already provided to the employee - this is just an allowance to allow the employee to have a decent monitor, mouse, keyboard, desk, chair - and $1k is more than enough to get some fairly decent equipment here.
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Yup, gotta make it hard for company secrets, like autonomous vehicles, from leaking. ;-)
When will Google (and Facebook, and Apple) . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:When will Google (and Facebook, and Apple) . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Your argument is with the government, not the tech companies. The government passes the law and writes the legislation. No ordinary business "avoids paying taxes" in the sense that they just skip out on paying. They all scrupulously follow the law, taking advantage of every legal avenue open to them. They pay huge sums to genius tax attorneys and creative finance types who figure out all the angles. I worked for 10 years with those guys, and they are a whole order of magnitude smarter than your average bear. Only stupid criminals get caught up on the wrong side of a courtroom.
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They all scrupulously follow the law, taking advantage of every legal avenue open to them.
This is true. However, since these companies also take advantage of relatively lax enforcement on influencing politicians (i.e., lobbying and covering as much of the gray area of bribery) to open new avenues and maintain existing avenues, simply following the law for them isn't all that impressive.
Re:When will Google (and Facebook, and Apple) . . (Score:4, Insightful)
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You mean like the influence PETA, NOW, and the NRA have? Why do we pretend that influencing the political process is the exclusive domain of corporations?
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"The government passes the law and writes the legislation."
The corporations write the legislation, then pay for the election campaigns of the politicians who pass it.
"They all scrupulously follow the law, taking advantage of every legal avenue open to them"
Because they wrote the law, and set those legal avenues within.
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I mean, the IRS has started some suit about FB. Will the IRS win? I hope so.
When the tax code isn't 100K pages, or ... (Score:3)
When the tax code is thousands and thousands of pages because Congress uses the Constitutional power to tax as a loophole to ignore Article 1 and the 10th amendment, smart accountants will find something in those 100,000 pages to take advantage of.
On the other hand, Google isn't a dude. "Google makes money" really means "the people who own Google, me and the other 50% of the country who checked the 401k box and have index funds, make money". And we're paying our taxes. Actually we're paying almost all of
Apple pays lots of taxes (Score:2)
When will Google (and Facebook, and Apple) .
Why do people keep lumping Apple into this complaint?
For one year prior to March 31st, 2020, Apple paid $9.876B in taxes [macrotrends.net].
Apple pays more in a single quarter for taxes, than I imagine the entire posting base of Slashdot will over a lifetime.
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Apparently, "pays no taxes" equals about $20B
Re: Apple pays lots of taxes (Score:2)
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Yippee!!! (Score:3, Funny)
Good luck with airborne transmission (Score:2)
Good luck for Google with the airborne transmission. There are numerous reports of things like churches having one superspreader infecting dozens of people in a matter of couple of hours. That can also happen in offices, even at 10 % capacity, especially if there are air recirculation systems in place (and most of the AC equipment function like that).
It seems that the transmission by touching is not that significant (at least it can be eliminated with good hygiene), droplet transmission plays some role (saf
Switzerland: rent for home office (Score:2)
The courts in Switzerland have recently declared that companies must pay you Fr. 150/month rent, if they require you to home-office.
I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. If it discourages companies from pushing home-office, that would be unfortunate. OTOH, Fr. 150 (close enough to $150) per month is still a lot less than an office building costs.
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Interesting. In Finland, you can get tax breaks for a home office, but it's not straightforward. For example, as a teacher I did half of my work at home, but that wasn't enough for any tax benefit. I also knew an entrepreneur who moved to a bigger apartment, because the home office had to be a separate room to qualify.
In any case, CHF 150 per month is chump change compared to actual living expenses. The Finnish tax break would have been something like EUR 700 per year, but living in Finland is considerab
Whats the point? (Score:2)
What's the point of dragging people back into their offices? Why not sell the offices, pay the shareholders a wedge and then fund a once-a-month meetup for the employees?
If some of the dusty old banks can figure out that there's no point bringing 70,000 employees to an office every day, then I'm sure google - the company that almost entirely exists on the Internet - can figure it out too...?