Google Offers Employees Free Electric Scooters To Get Them Back To the Office (theverge.com) 47
Google is preparing to bring its employees back to the office this week, and as an added bonus, it'll be offering them free electric scooters to help ease the transition. The Verge reports: The tech giant is teaming up with e-scooter maker Unagi to launch a new program called "Ride Scoot," in which most of Google's US-based workers can get reimbursed for the full cost of a monthly subscription to Unagi's stylish Model One scooter. The Model One, which retails for $990, is a lightweight dual-motor scooter with a top speed of 20mph and a range of 15.5 miles. Unagi founder and CEO David Hyman said the idea was to help Google employees get to work -- or even just to the closest bus stop. (Google famously provides free shuttle bus service to its employees in Silicon Valley.) "They know there's apprehension amongst employees," Hyman said. "People got really accustomed to working from home. And they're just trying to do everything they can to improve the experience of coming back."
Unagi won't just be handing out free scooters to every Google employee, though. Unagi plans on setting up booths at various Google offices to sign up employees for a monthly scooter subscription at the discounted rate of $44.10 per month, plus the $50 enrollment fee -- the total of which will be fully reimbursable by Google. Scooter subscriptions will also be added as a transportation option to Google's internal employee portal. And Google and Unagi will host demo days for employees to try out the Model One at various office locations.
Employees must also use the scooter for at least nine commutes per month to get fully reimbursed for their monthly subscription. (Google plans on using the honor system and won't be tracking employees' scooter usage.) In addition to Google's main headquarters in Mountain View, other eligible locations include Seattle, Kirkland, Irvine, Sunnyvale, Playa Vista, Austin, and New York City.
Unagi won't just be handing out free scooters to every Google employee, though. Unagi plans on setting up booths at various Google offices to sign up employees for a monthly scooter subscription at the discounted rate of $44.10 per month, plus the $50 enrollment fee -- the total of which will be fully reimbursable by Google. Scooter subscriptions will also be added as a transportation option to Google's internal employee portal. And Google and Unagi will host demo days for employees to try out the Model One at various office locations.
Employees must also use the scooter for at least nine commutes per month to get fully reimbursed for their monthly subscription. (Google plans on using the honor system and won't be tracking employees' scooter usage.) In addition to Google's main headquarters in Mountain View, other eligible locations include Seattle, Kirkland, Irvine, Sunnyvale, Playa Vista, Austin, and New York City.
$44 a month? (Score:5, Insightful)
A little under two dollars a day?
Re:$44 a month? (Score:5, Funny)
Yea, it's a little underwhelming. If they want people to come back to the valley, they may need to do better than a $44/mo try-not-to-get-killed-by-actual-traffic experience generator.
Re: (Score:2)
What are they supposed to do, treat them like adults?
That's crazy talk. Next they'll be demanding respect for human dignity and asking questions.
Perks (Score:5, Informative)
Remember, every perk your employer can offer you comes with a dollar value. Don't be fooled into taking a lower salary just because they have a pool table in the office.
Re: (Score:1)
True, but there are sometimes mutually beneficial arrangements that can be put in place. For example, the employer might be able to offer professional training to staff by utilizing internal resources.
The value to the employee in this case might be the ticket price for the course (multiplied by number of employees on the course), while the cost to the employer is the cost of the wage of the person delivering the training.
It's a bit unfair to say the employee is always getting screwed - some genuinely good
Re: (Score:2)
Of course, I don't say that a perk isn't a good thing, just that it has a dollar value. The value might be quite high for you, in that case, great!
Re: (Score:2)
The important question is whether that perk costs the company more than its value to you. A real office with walls costs the company some $/year but it may actually be worth more than that to an employee who doesn't want to work in open space.
Next month - google ends program due to accidents (Score:2, Interesting)
try transit passes / gas cards / tolls for people (Score:2)
try transit passes / gas cards / tolls for people who live to far away to use scooters.
Well with gas at $4+ an gal a lot of them are better off at home.
Re: (Score:2)
Google already runs a shuttle bus service.
I believe the idea behind the scooters is offering people a mass-transit-free method of transportation "because covid".
Because, you know, mass transit is very risky for covid but the bars, clubs, and restaurants people are packed into remain totally, 100%, utterly covid safe. /s
Coming Back (Score:3, Insightful)
People got really accustomed to working from home. And they're just trying to do everything they can to improve the experience of coming back.
Nothing can make the sadistic torture of going back to the office anything less than soul crushing. All company office space should be sold off, and only the network and server spaces retained (or expanded). In-person workspace is an anachronism that needs to be nuked from orbit when at all possible.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
There is not a single incentive you can offer me to lure me back apart from a huge monetary one (ie, pay me for my time as soon as I step out the door until I'm back home again, and compensate me fully for all costs incurred, like transit costs and overpriced lunches).
Time is money, and companies have had a long enough free ride where time spent travelling is not compensated because having a job is a "privilege".
Re: (Score:2)
+5 insightful. The idea of going to an office "just because" should be put into the history books. I've already told my employer that I'm not coming in to the office again unless it's for a definite reason that will benefit from our team being in the same space. Maybe a monthly meeting/get together or so.
Other than that I'm simply not prepared to waste my time commuting just so I can sit in the same physical space as people who I've been quite happily working with using modern communication technology.
It
Re: (Score:2)
100% agree.
Pay for the commute, or let me work from home. After 2+ years there's no excuse you can give to make me go back into the office. It's simply not necessary, and a giant waste of my time and money.
It is necessary for some jobs, and in that case I fully support the time and cost of commuting being paid for by the employer. And they better start considering this, because more and more companies are realizing that there's no reason to pay for giant office buildings downtown and more and more remote jo
Re: (Score:2)
Can people packing supermarket shelves work from home? no
Can people transporting goods work from home? no
Can people doing city maintence work from home no?
Can people deliver mail work from home? no?
Can people driving buses or trains or other transport work from home? no
Stop with the nonchalant BS of calling any business as a nazi just because they want their staff back into an office.
you don't like it? great - fuck off and go find a job with it written into your contract that you can work from home....
these
Re: (Score:2)
Can people driving buses or trains or other transport work from home? no
I have this cunning plan involving remote control, a TV monitor and a game controller
Re: (Score:2)
Idiot, the companies are not trying to get THOSE people in back to the office. Obviously they're trying to get the people back that currently CAN work from home.
Re: (Score:2)
You know what else none of those people can do? Work from an office.
If you work in an office, it's a near-certainty that your job doesn't require your physical presence, aside from a few exceptions like management and support staff for people doing physical work, where the office is usually more of a return-point between excursions.
Re: Coming Back (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
For what it's worth, every company has their own culture too.
Yeah, yeah, sounds like fuzzy nonsense that doesn't matter...but if you work for a company with a good, positive culture then you know it does matter - at least to a reasonable degree. Does everyone hate the boss and skip out on work or do people go the extra mile to complete projects on time and save money where they can? Do people actually like and socialize (and cooperate) with their coworkers or do they spend lunch hours back stabbing and st
They should offer finger traps (Score:2)
No thanks (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, sign me up!
What's with these companies thinking I'll return to some shitty office for a few trinkets... let alone if I'll ever go back at all?
Re: (Score:2)
That's mostly how Google management treats their employees these days, like people who need to be distracted by shiny trinkets. Not in every department, but in a lot of them.
Re: (Score:2)
I suppose that's what you get when you hire primarily from the smart phone generation with attention spans measured in milliseconds.
Re: (Score:2)
I suppose that's what you get
ugh tl;dr
Re: (Score:2)
Got to wonder - would they keep doing it if it didn't work?
If you let yourself be distracted by shiny trinkets you've got nobody but yourself to blame. I imagine it works best with young workers who don't yet recognize their true value, or the true cost of doing somewhere day after day after day... How can they when they've yet to put in even a few thousand days of work in their life?
Of course that would also likely mean any company that does such a thing would have a whole lot of relatively inexperienced
Re: (Score:2)
I imagine it works best with young workers who don't yet recognize their true value,
That has been my observation.
On the other hand, the *right* trinkets and culture can genuinely be worth far more than they cost.
Google used to be an engineer oriented company (and in some departments it still is), and at that time the perks were definitely really great. Every perk can be converted to a dollar value, but sometimes the value is good enough. I'm just advocated that you be aware what the value is (and some of them are kind of low. Like free lunch is cool but it's the same as paying someone to bring lunch to you every day).
Free scooters (Score:2)
Downtown Orlando is littered with those stupid e-scooters. I wish what Google was offering was a bounty to collect them and bring them to a recycler.
Re: (Score:1)
You know what it's even more littered with? Stupid big cars that completely dehumanize the street environment while dramatically lowering urban density and increasing the heat island effect all paid for at great expense from *your* taxes.
This belongs on Reddit's anti work forum (Score:3)
Is that it? - really? (Score:4, Insightful)
So, in order to sit in an office, 9-5, the lure is you get to ride an e-scooter for free - wow, gee! - how underwhelming.
Hmmm, let me think about that for just one nano-second.
Done, it's a bad deal.
You expect employees to give up the wonderful freedom of pretty much determining their own workday, free from commute, free from having to "hang out" with people they probably don't want to "hang out" with in the first place, for a pathetic e-scooter commute?
So, yeah, raining outside, it's an hour commute to the office, so need to get up an hour early, get on a crowded bus, then ride on a scooter for 15 minutes for the final part of the journey?
Then I get to sit in an open plan office, with numerous distractions, have to use public restrooms, can't take a quick 30 minutes to do some chores - because I'm stuck an hour away from home - then I get to do the commute all over again to get back home - and it's still raining. And the bus gets stuck in traffic, so the commute takes 2 hours.
Cool, that's 3 hours of my day lost and I was productive for 50% less of my workday, plus I still have those chores to get through at home.
Nice.
It reminds me of the days of 9-5, where jobs were advertised with "free parking!" "free coffee!", or you'd go to an interview and it would be like "Hey, we work hard here, but we play hard too! - free pizza if you work till 8pm!" - YEAH, sign me up! /s
Free scooter? LOL (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Any helmets? (Score:2)
People got really accustomed to working from home (Score:2)
Not spending money on gas and not standing for hours in traffic seems to be addictive.
$3.27/hr perk. (Score:2)
Let us assume the average commute takes 90 minutes (1.5 hours) each day.
One has too use the scooter for nine trips to the office each month to qualify.
If you had a choice, would you choose to get a $44.10 perk in exchange for 13.5 hours of labor?
Or would you start looking at other jobs with full time WFH?
a multibillion dollar company cheaps out (Score:2)
Companies with a lot of real estate... (Score:2)
This is why I say cities are kind of messed up,
Why bring them back? (Score:2)
Why does Google (or any other company for that matter) want it's employees to work in any particular place?
What's so great (for Google) about workers in an office?
During the lockdown ... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
How many recharges will my scooter need to reach the office?
78. Just to answer the question.
No (Score:2)
I imagine a number of those people live more than 10 minutes away from the office. Google should instead allow commute and prep time to count against their daily hours worked. Nobody will want to give up their newly discovered extra time they have every week, not spent comuniting to the "office".
haha (Score:2)
Haha, they thought they were buying them sushi, but it turned out to be scooters, not shooters.