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Google Businesses Technology

Google To Begin Reopening Offices July 6, Will Let Employees Expense $1,000 for Equipment While Telecommuting (cnet.com) 44

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
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.
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Google To Begin Reopening Offices July 6, Will Let Employees Expense $1,000 for Equipment While Telecommuting More

Google To Begin Reopening Offices July 6, Will Let Employees Expense $1,000 for Equipment While Telecommuting

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  • 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

    • do you have to use there laptop? if so then $1000 can be good for display + desk

    • That's a nice subsidy for home computing to add things on, not buy a whole new set,

    • It's even more unsettling when people comment without even reading the summary. Its $1,000 towards an employee's home office, not just a laptop. Could be desk or anything. And Google already issues out laptops, so I doubt this money is being used for another laptop. They could use it to buy many leather-bound books and their apartment smells of rich mahogany
    • It's not for laptops, isn't that obvious? They already have their company-issued computers. The $1k is for "other" stuff people may not have at home. Want a fancy ergonomic chair? Adjustable desk? An extra 4k monitor (though I would guess any devs already have those company provided as well)? Beer fridge and Gucci sweatpants (if they can get their manager to sign off)? At least try to read the article before being snarky, or is your time too valuable for that as well?
    • Well I got jack squat so I blew $89 of my paycheck on a vinyl chair from Staples and $20 on a desk from craigslist, now which do you suppose is more common?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by broohaha ( 5295 )

      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

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jmccue ( 834797 )

      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

      • $30 for a $4 HDMI cable?
        I don't blame them for denying it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jmccue ( 834797 )

          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'

          • Haha, we call ours the "JIT" (just-in-time) supplier - which of course takes 3x as long as anything else nowdays but still charges more as thanks for keeping stock on hand.

          • 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?

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by jmccue ( 834797 )
              Since I could not order it, I bought my own much cheaper. The Internal site has it for $30
      • I work for a subsidiary of a subsidiary of, well, let's just call it one of the 5 largest corporations. We expensed a lot of cables when we sent everyone home.

    • 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

      • " $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.

        • 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.

    • 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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hattig ( 47930 )

      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.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      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 difference in

  • When will Google (and Facebook, and Apple) . . . (Score:3, Insightful)

    by PeeAitchPee ( 712652 ) on Tuesday May 26, 2020 @06:35PM (#60108342)
    . . . start paying some FUCKING TAXES??? I'm tired of hearing how awesome these bros are and how well they treat their workers. Fuck them -- they're all a net negative on society as long as they continue to funnel trillions of dollars offshore instead of paying up like the rest of us have to do.

    • Re:When will Google (and Facebook, and Apple) . . (Score:5, Insightful)

      by davide marney ( 231845 ) on Tuesday May 26, 2020 @06:58PM (#60108372) Journal

      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.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by larryjoe ( 135075 )

        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)

          by TomWinTejas ( 6575590 ) on Tuesday May 26, 2020 @11:56PM (#60108936)
          When do you think it will dawn on you that the larger the state, the more incentive there is for rent seeking behavior? Yet the answer always seems to be that some new regulation needs to be implemented to somehow limit the influence of those with money on the state, repeating the same failed attempts of the past time after time. So long as the state controls vast sums of money and has high taxes from which to offer deductions and credits, those with money will figure out a way to increase their wealth and power using the state.

        • 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?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by vux984 ( 928602 )

        "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.

      • I mean, the IRS has started some suit about FB. Will the IRS win? I hope so.

    • 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

    • 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.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Guidii ( 686867 )
        Also note that Google/Alphabet paid 5.3B in 2019 [macrotrends.net] and FACE paid 6.3B [macrotrends.net]

        Apparently, "pays no taxes" equals about $20B

      • Their sales are up, and the taxes they pay are down each year... Sounds like Apple is figuring out more ways of dodging the tax man. But im sure, as always, you'll try to twist the facts to make Apple look like some kind of saint.... And this doesnt include how Apple is suing the EU to avoid paying its fair share of taxes
    • Do you think Google's employees don't pay income taxes, just, "like the rest of us"?

  • Yippee!!! (Score:3, Funny)

    by trailerparkcassanova ( 469342 ) on Tuesday May 26, 2020 @07:44PM (#60108482)
    $1000.00 to restock the liquor cabinet!!!

  • 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

  • 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.

    • 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

  • 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...?

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