Google Is Saving Over $1 Billion a Year by Working From Home (bloomberg.com) 32
With Covid-19 restrictions lifting, more people are booking trips and hotels online, which is very good for Google's advertising business. Google's employees, however, are working from home and not traveling as much on the company dime -- and that's also good for its business. From a report: During the first quarter, Google parent Alphabet saved $268 million in expenses from company promotions, travel and entertainment, compared to same period a year earlier, "primarily as a result of COVID-19," according to a company filing. On an annualized basis, that would be more than $1 billion. Indeed, Alphabet said in its annual report earlier this year that advertising and promotional expenses dropped by $1.4 billion in 2020 as the company reduced spending, paused or rescheduled campaigns, and changed some events to digital-only formats due to the pandemic. Travel and entertainment expenses fell by $371 million. The savings offset many of the costs that came with hiring thousands more workers. And the pandemic prudence allowed the company to keep its marketing and administrative costs effectively flat for the first quarter, despite boosting revenue by 34%.
COVID, has revealed lies. (Score:5, Interesting)
If Google saved that much money and the business didn't see a considerable negative impact (34% increase? Quite the opposite in fact.), then that news should be telling not just for Google, but for every company that previously catered to spoiled employees who jump on an airplane just to have lunch with the customer.
Two lies COVID has forcibly flushed out and helped dispel:
Lie #1: Remote work, cannot work.
Lie #2: Business travel, is a necessity.
It will be interesting to see how the corporate travel whores, spin this post-COVID in order to keep their Triple Diamond Medallion Platinum status.
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> Two lies COVID has forcibly flushed out and helped dispel:
Snow melts in warm weather, yet there I still see snow on the ground on a warm spring day.
#1: Some projects were already kicked off and the fixed groups already had a working dynamic. Wait until new projects come online with new people and you can't whiteboard.
#2: Customers are understanding because there is a pandemic. Wait until it's over and then see what happens when you neglect them.
Re:COVID, has revealed lies. (Score:4, Interesting)
#1: Some projects were already kicked off and the fixed groups already had a working dynamic. Wait until new projects come online with new people and you can't whiteboard.
21st Century employees should have the technical prowess and capability to reduce a whiteboard marker to the value of huffing fumes. T.120 electronic whiteboarding protocols were around before GenZ was born, so technology certainly isn't the excuse.
I wonder how the younger generation would feel if I used the Boomer term chalkboard to describe this dependency? Because you certainly can.
#2: Customers are understanding because there is a pandemic. Wait until it's over and then see what happens when you neglect them.
Well, if you're currently neglecting customers, then that's a matter of mitigating risk right now. Either the risk is worth it, or it is not.
As far as this being "over", I'm certainly not holding my breath when billionaires become richer during lockdowns. Sadly the influence of Greed, matters.
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Honestly, and based on the merits of the product.
I know, I know. An alien concept.
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Yeah, even the FUD from the City of London seems to be dwindling away, we had a story every week from the now Tory run BBC, from Goldman Sachs, then a City of London office space company amongst others telling us working from home was dead, and not going to continue.
This week we've had the announcement that significant portions of the City of London are going to be converted to housing.
The writing is on the wall, companies like Goldman Sachs can get on board, or die as they haemorrhage talent to companies t
Re:COVID, has revealed lies. (Score:5, Insightful)
Two lies COVID has forcibly flushed out and helped dispel:
Lie #1: Remote work, cannot work.
Lie #2: Business travel, is a necessity.
It will be interesting to see how the corporate travel whores, spin this post-COVID in order to keep their Triple Diamond Medallion Platinum status.
As one of those Diamond Medallion corporate travel whores, here's my spin:
The travel that I normally do is to attend committee meetings of standardization bodies, to meet with other employees at other sites, and to meet with people from partners to hammer out solutions to technical problems. All of this can be done remotely, but not as well.
We've all been making do with video conferences, but it is far less effective than face to face meetings. We spend a lot more time, get a lot less done, and feel a lot more worn by the process. That last point is quite significant, when you consider that the "old" way for me to attend standard meetings was to fly ten timezones away for five days of ten-hour meetings during which we debate technical minutiae then immediately fly home. It's pretty exhausting. The new way is that to have a four-hour meeting every morning (7 AM my time) for a month. Without the human contact, the meetings get a little more heated, and this is a group of people who've been working closely for years and already know one another. It would be worse with a group of strangers. And, of course, attending these meetings isn't the only thing I have to do, so while I can just not do the rest of my job for one week while I fly to, say, Melbourne, when doing it remotely I tend to do a four-hour meeting in the morning, then work 8 hours on everything else. Every day, for a month.
Discussing complex problems and solutions is just more effective face to face. And I've been full-time remote for most of my 30-year career so I know how to do the long-distance thing, and it's fine 90% of the time. But that last 10% really benefits from the bandwidth you only get in person.
As for the "no negative impact on business" part... I don't think that's sustainable. It works for a while, but eventually the accumulated negatives of not being able to travel will take a toll.
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> We've all been making do with video conferences, but it is far less effective than face to face meetings.
You're trying to convince people that have long distance relationships with waifu pillows the value of human to human interaction. I'm not saying it's a lost cause.... but.
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We've all been making do with video conferences, but it is far less effective than face to face meetings. We spend a lot more time, get a lot less done, and feel a lot more worn by the process. That last point is quite significant, when you consider that the "old" way for me to attend standard meetings was to fly ten timezones away for five days of ten-hour meetings during which we debate technical minutiae then immediately fly home. It's pretty exhausting. The new way is that to have a four-hour meeting every morning (7 AM my time) for a month.
You claim a week full of 10-hour meetings is more effective, but I tend to question that. There is a certain point after so many hours that you start to mentally lose rather than win, especially when the team is going blind 30 hours deep into "technical minutiae" (BTDT). If technical trainers thought a 10-hour day still held value after 7 or 8 hours, then we would probably be seeing a lot more 10-hour days in training courses as the norm, rather than "waste" an extra day or two. Same goes for workdays, c
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You claim a week full of 10-hour meetings is more effective, but I tend to question that.
I would have agreed with you before doing it for three years and then seeing the difference when COVID started. It helps that most people (except for the chair, the editor and a couple of others) can "tune out" for various sections that aren't relevant to them. I actually get a fair amount of code written during those parts of committee meetings, which I find refreshing. The chairs and the editors have incredible mental stamina. I don't know how they do it. But they do, and those long days work surprisingly
Re:COVID, has revealed lies. (Score:4, Informative)
Before covid (B.C. ?) I travelled only about 3-4 times per year either to a conference or also a standards making body meeting. My experience is that:
Day 1 - people flying in from all over, usually there is a evening reception. All schmoozing, nothing really gets done
Day 2 - work gets done..but starting after breakfast. Morning session I, coffee break morning session II. Then 90 minute lunch, people grab food, catch up on office work and phone calls. Afternoon session 1, then break for the day.
Day 3 - same as Day 2, except some silly keynote or similar speech in the afternoon. People get wasted at the hotel bar that night.
Day 4 - people flying out. If you are hosting a meeting the last morning of the last day good luck.
Maybe there is a total of 12 usable hours in there. I've never been at a place that ran 10 hour meeting days. Not saying it doesn't happen, but I've not experienced it. Most people are brain dead by 2pm. For 12 hours of worthwhile time it costs like $3k per person for the travel, etc. Don't get me wrong the locales are usual nice (Palm Springs, SF, Miami, Colorado Springs, etc) , hotels are great, and the buffets are full of bacon, but if it were my money at stake I would choose the admittedly crappier but waaay cheaper Zoom and throw in some online mental health support as insult to injury
Good news is that the execs love travel junkets and will at least revive those for themselves. Peons might be less fortunate.
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My experience is that... maybe there is a total of 12 usable hours in there.
The two ISO committees I'm a member of are very hard-working. We usually have one evening reception mid-week. And, yes, we have all-day meetings, every day. It's exhausting, but we actually get a lot more done in a week than I'd have thought possible. Oh, and between the two committees I have up to 8 meetings per year. But the VC version is less effective and more tiring.
Don't get me wrong the locales are usual nice (Palm Springs, SF, Miami, Colorado Springs, etc)
ISO being international, my meetings are all over the world. They try to rotate around so that no one on the committee has to travel more.
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Remote work the reality. It is a career dead end. Remote workers the easiest to fire. Remote workers the easiest to cut their pay. Remote workers promotion prospects, meeting managers every day, working with them every day all day, yeah right promotions, you have to be joking.
Remote work is only fit for pre-retirement, your career is over and long term employment chances very low, first to be fired, easiest to fire, no one even notices them gone. Remote worker buried out in the sticks, job opportunities zer
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I wouldn't exactly call it a lie. It's a race to the bottom. Business travel is not a necessity - as long as nobody else does business travel. The moment one company starts sending their salespeople out for in-person meetings, that gives them a (marginal) advantage over companies only doing virtual meetings.. And all those companies then have to start sending their salespeople out for in-person meetings to remain competitive.
Net result being that everyone ends u
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karma is my girlfriend now, quite nice compared to most of the former ones
but still
It's grand for now (Score:5, Interesting)
In a few years a lot of people will tire of laptopping day-in day-out for a boss they never see, communicating with colleagues they never meet and people will largely stop giving a phuq. A lot of them already don't give a phuq but the company realises these are strange times and the whole thing is on shaky ground so they're not going to fire a whole lot of people.
I can already see the negative effect working from home has on some companies I deal with. Impossible to contact the person you want, no reply to emails, everything dead slow. Many employees are just looking after the kids and watching netflix while pretending to work. Even if they are doing the work to the best of their ability mentally they are still drifting away from the company, slowly losing touch, slowly giving fewer phuqs every day.
Now I'm not some advocate of the 5 day office grind but if your job is reduced to "laptopping for income" then it's hard to stay interested. It happened to me a good few years ago, long before covid. First it was great but after a certain number of months of little/no contact with the office I didn't give a sh1t anymore
Re:It's grand for now (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not sure why you think these things. I've been working at home for most of two decades now quite successfully. It's always funny to me that all the people who want to say how it doesn't work, really haven't done it for a particularly long time.
There are things (like any situation) that people need to learn to make it work well. That's true of office work as well in my experience. The biggest for at home life working well in my experience is learning that remote work doesn't mean stuck at a desk at home it means not being stuck at a particular place and people at work shouldn't be your whole social life (this is true in office life too, but people don't realize it!). You should have a network of people in your life that have effectively nothing to do with work (even if you originally met them through a job).
As for staying motivated or focused, it's really no different than in school learning to do your homework was or anything else that involves needing focus. But if the people on a group are fading there's a lot management can do to help people be motivated and focused. Mind you most of the managers in the current covid situation of WFH simply haven't learnt anything about managing remote workers and are punting on the idea of doing so because they're so sure WFH will end any day now.
Now mind you, I don't think everyone will want to work from home or that it works perfectly for everyone. Being in an office sucks for a lot of people too though (I will quit on the spot if I'm told I have to be in an office every day). Going forward I'd hope businesses try and put some effort into letting people pick the environment that is best for them as an individual, and let people change their mind when their lifestyle changes, it's alright.
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I'm the opposite. Being doing it for a few years now. More motivated and I have more energy to put into it. Unsurprising since I'm not wasting an hour a day or more commuting.
I get enough contact via video meetings. No open plan office so I can concentrate and get a lot done. I take a walk at lunchtime, and enjoy a cooked lunch made by my wife.
Would not go back now. If they try to force it I'll look for a better job.
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Re:It's grand for now (Score:4, Informative)
> In a few years a lot of people will tire of laptopping
> I can already see the negative effect working from home has on some companies I deal with
How many years have you worked from home?
The reason I ask is because I've worked from home for about 6 years now -- across 2 jobs. While working from home is NOT for everyone there are numerous advantages and disadvantages. The key is to know your strengths and weaknesses to decide if working at the office, or at home, is more optimal.
The biggest advantage is that I don't have to waste time commuting. Getting 1 to 2 hours of your life back every workday, because you don't have to commute, is very nice. Plus I'm not polluting the environment. (One minor downside is that in past jobs I've walked or biked to work so it important to still have a fitness schedule.)
One of the biggest downside is the "lack of impromptu water cooler talk" where people just freely hang out, talk, and discuss bugs. There is probably some comic / meme about how a company wanted to stop (programmers?) from "wasting their time" with idle "water cooler talk" only to find out that productivity took a nose side so they re-instated it but I can't find it at the moment.
Another downside is potential distractions. It takes more discipline to stay focused.
Science is starting to realize that when we change rooms our thought patterns change. i.e. Doorway Effect. This is why having a dedicated office can help.
> Impossible to contact the person you want, no reply to emails, everything dead slow.
Being remote is not the cause of that. Sounds like you have people who don't understand the value of communication and teamwork.
> after a certain number of months of little/no contact with the office I didn't give a sh1t anymore
If location is having THAT much of an impact on your job then maybe the type of work might be a clue that it is time to change jobs? If you aren't generally excited about your job then why are you slaving away over it?
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Since Google offsets company office space costs (Score:1)
Wouldn't it be nice to pay their employees for the home office space employees need to properly work?
Yes (Score:1)
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They should be glad they have a job, and eating good at home can be very cheap.
I'm so happy for them.... (Score:2)
... and all the lower prices coming our way, right?
I mean, that's the formula.... costs go up, prices go up.... costs go down, prices go ???
I have no problem with reality, just the lying about it
WFH works for some... (Score:3)
but not everyone. Personally, I love it but other people I work with can't wait to get back in the office. The key is to give people a choice and, as long as they are getting their work done, let them work. If you find that people are goofing off at home then either get their butts into the office or fire them. Simple as that.
As far as business travel goes, if you are in sales then you are probably going to want to do a lot of your business in person. I have done a ton of business travel over the years and in my line of work it was largely unnecessary. For the first few weeks of a project I would visit the customer at their office and gather all the requirements. Once I had that I would work from home to build out the code. When it came time to test it I would want to be there in person, as well as when they went live. But other than that I didn't feel the need to be there every week. Some customers would insist on it anyway - even when I showed them hotel bills for $400 a night, which they were paying. I figured it was their money so if they want me to travel I will.
But things have changed a lot since then. We have much better collaboration tools and faster internet connections. It will be interesting to see if business travel returns to anywhere near what it was in the hay days. I really doubt it but time will tell.
It must have been the free food (Score:3)
They must have been spending quite a lot on all that free food! /s
Outsourcing costs (Score:1)