Google To Invest $9.5 Billion in US Offices, Data Centers This Year (yahoo.com) 16
Alphabet's Google said on Wednesday it plans to invest about $9.5 billion across its U.S. offices and data centers this year, up from $7 billion last year. From a report: Google said the investment will create at least 12,000 full-time jobs in 2022 and focus on data centers in several states including Nevada, Nebraska and Virginia. The company will open a new office in Atlanta this year, and expand its data center in Storey County, Nevada, it added. "It might seem counterintuitive to step up our investment in physical offices even as we embrace more flexibility in how we work. Yet we believe it's more important than ever to invest in our campuses...," Google said in a statement. Google has been trying to bring back its employees to some of its offices in the United States, the UK and Asia Pacific by mandating working from office for about three days a week, a step to end policies that let employees work remotely because of COVID-19 concerns.
Lol (Score:2, Funny)
Help, don’t let our real estate investments lose money!
Re: (Score:1)
Seems they'd be excited to save some money on office infrastructure and invest that money somewhere else?
It doesn't make sense.
Re:Lol (Score:4, Insightful)
Because it includes *BOTH* the office *AND* data centres and well you can't run a Google scale data centre in your basement. What's the bet that the vast majority of that money is going into the data centres. Hey you might also be spending money "re-configuring" your office space for hybrid working too.
Lower Pay for lower cost of living area (Score:2)
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"Data center". This doesn't mean desk jobs that can be done remotely. There's a lot of stuff to do that's not using MS Office, including lots of manual labor. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who can install and replace servers and re-arrange cables.
Remember, if you can do your job from home and it's not a highly specialized job, then someone in overseas can also do that job. I am not sure why people just don't try to bamboozle their bosses by claiming only local people can do the job, just
Re: (Score:2)
Why is this theory making the rounds. Google is paying a huge amount of money to... itself? Companies increase profits by saving money, not by investing in real estate. Most corporate offices in Silicon Valley are leasted - the companies lose money by having people going to the office, and this is not because they knuckle under to thugs from the real estate cabal.
I know some people don't want to go back to the office, but why create yet another conspiracy theory over it? Take a breath, quit your job, an
Offices nobody wants to be in (Score:4, Insightful)
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the squeeze is coming, best prepare yourself for it. you do need money don't you?
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The genie is out of the bottle. Remote work is real and proven. If your company doesn't even offer a hybrid option don't expect those new hires to come rolling in.
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the squeeze is coming, best prepare yourself for it. you do need money don't you?
You must be too young to remember the days before the Dot Com boom, when "white collar" workers really do need to wear a white collar shirt to work, along with suit and tie.
The Dot Com boom changed that when new tech startups allowed casual wear at work, and eventually many non-tech companies started to allow different levels of casual wear. Even after the Dot Com busted, most places kept the dress code unchanged, because as another poster put it, the genie is out of the bottle, after a year or two of casu
The stink of desperation (Score:2)
I get expanding data centers. However the RTO push is likely to fail unless we get mass immigration and a record number of graduates. Too many jobs, not enough workers.
Even Wall Street is abandoning office space. We had several MORE buildings go into default this year. Not one or two, but ten or eleven already this year. They're rapidly headed
Could be a win... (Score:2)
...if they're using that money to convert open-plan back to something people actually want.
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Open, cubes, or offices, it won't make any difference as long as the heads-down, butts-in-seats, constant ostensible productivity gains culture remains. Work in the office was already done in isolation long before COVID. My boss kept asking me how I was dealing with it, and I kept telling him that other than the commute, it's all the same, just easier to let those recovered commuting hours be used for work.
Offices have walls and and a door... (Score:2)
What Google builds is coding pens. Even battery hens have it better; they get a whole cage.