Google is charging its employees $99 a night to stay at its on-campus hotel to help "transition to the hybrid workplace." - eviltoast
      • penguin@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        20
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        It has nothing to do with profits. It’s more profitable to have everyone work from home. Upper managers and executives simply prefer having everyone in the office because they like it. It’s their preference.

          • Devdogg@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            7
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            Uhh, yes it is? I mean, if you take a look at how much real estate San Francisco has just in its downtown area that should tell you something.

    • Cosmonaut_Collin@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      1 year ago

      Can we please think of the billionaires? What are they gonna do when their office buildings are empty? They need their property value! /s

    • Chunk@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      1 year ago

      They want to force attrition. They over hired and need to reduce headcount but they don’t want the negative press of laying more people off.

      • sigswitch@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Whilst it wouldn’t surprise me at all if this was the case, I’ve seen similar things at other companies, it’s a completely brain-dead strategy. The people who leave are the most qualified and capable employees who can easily find a job elsewhere and you’re just left with all the people who the company swept up in the boom period where they were hiring anyone with a pulse.

  • Not A Bird@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    198
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Isn’t that the dream for a capitalist! Labor that sleeps at work. Google takes it a step further and asks employees to pay for being able to sleep at work.

      • happy_camper@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        The score is just soulless “lo-fi beats” type of music played all over the grounds to avoid any one person ever having to sit alone with just their thoughts as background noise.

      • Shard@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        Holy hell boss.

        I thought you meant something like china’s social credit score.

        Get more points, you get a better chair and OLED screen or even a chance at a promotion.

        Points go down, you get sent to a shitty cubicle at the far corner of the office. Then a verbal warning, followed by a written warning…

      • Shard@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        Holy hell boss.

        I thought you meant something like china’s social credit score.

        Get more points, you get a better chair and OLED screen or even a chance at a promotion.

        Points go down, you get sent to a shitty cubicle at the far corner of the office. Then a verbal warning, followed by a written warning…

  • Hoozzer@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    158
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Next they will start issueing company scrip, then a company town around the YouTube mines.

    • jonne@infosec.pub
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      48
      ·
      1 year ago

      Companies will start using crypto as a way to recreate what scrip was back before it was banned. Meta made a play for that a few years back but luckily they failed.

      • cadekat@pawb.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Say what you want about crypto in general, but it’d be an extremely bad choice for company scrip…

        • jonne@infosec.pub
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          11
          ·
          1 year ago

          Depends on the implementation, you can make contracts do anything, and if the bulk of the currency is premined and in the hands of the corporation, they can manipulate its value freely. Not every cryptocurrency works the way Bitcoin or Etherium work, some are quite centralised (see XRP for example).

          Meta could demand that ads on its platform are paid in metabucks, pay employees (partly) in metabucks and manipulate the market by controlling liquidity. Essentially they’d be their own sovereign corporation issuing its own currency.

          • cadekat@pawb.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            All true!

            You should consider transaction fees though: someone’s gotta pay 'em. “Run their own chain” you might say, but then just use a database. Don’t need crypto-economic security when you’re the issuer and primary retailer.

            That leads into having a public ledger. Great for public blockchains, but if you’re issuing company scrip, you probably don’t want outsiders auditing transactions.

            • jonne@infosec.pub
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              Yeah, transaction fees can go to the issuer, so the corporation could double dip.

              And as for transactions being publicly available on the ledger, SEC filings are public too, corporations openly bragged about raising prices beyond inflation and making record profits and they still had most of the populace convinced that the cause of inflation was just those darn lazy Millennials that didn’t want to work any more.

              In the modern manufacturing consent era, it doesn’t matter that the truth is publicly available as long as you control mainstream media (which a corporation like Meta can easily do, first on their own platform and secondly by buying ads in the right newspapers).

  • Lord_McAlister@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    136
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    Sooooooooooome people say man is made out of mud, the poor man’s made out of muscle and blood. Muscle and blood, skin and bone, a mind that’s weak and a back thats strong… You move 16 tons… whadaya get? Another day older and deeper in debt… St. Peter don’tcha call me because I can’t go…

    I owe my soul… to the company store…

  • carl_dungeon@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    123
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    Fucking company town. Google has become a real shit company. Switch your default search to duck duck go or anything else people!

      • Stefen Auris@pawb.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        1 year ago

        As awesome as it is, it’s still a meta search engine so you’d have to remember to exclude Google. Otherwise hosting your own search engine is mega cool!

        • oo1@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          1 year ago

          yeah, using a someone elses public searx (like i do ) just seems unhygienic.

    • Steeve@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      arrow-down
      24
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      So this is absolutely a scummy move by google, no doubt, but google employees are some of the highest paid people in the world at this point. Boycott them if you want, but don’t feel like you have to right this injustice done to their employees, because they’ve still got it really good.

      Edit: Just so this doesn’t come across as a crabs in a bucket type scenario, I am in this field and I am fortunate enough to make similar money, not as much, but equivalent in my country’s market. We are not the people that need fighting for, we’re the ones that should be fighting for others to have similar opportunities.

      • carl_dungeon@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        20
        ·
        1 year ago

        No I just mean the this is yet another item in a LOOOOOOOONG line of things where Google has gone the pure shit route.

        In the last couple years, Google serves me more ads as search results than actual relevant results. The enshitification of the internet is real and I finally see it. I’ve have enough. Between Reddit, twitter, Google, SEO, Facebook and friends, Amazon becoming wish.con, etc everything is just going to shit. Maybe it makes me some old boomer dreaming of the glory days, but I’ve had enough. I refuse to be a product and I refuse to put any money towards these shitmaster overlords if there’s any way I can help it.

        • Steeve@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          All fair reasons to use another service if that’s a deal breaker for sure

          • kamenoko@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            6
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            Your edit doesn’t do it for me. You guys managed to get remote work, and now it’s being taken away. Do you think the pay scale has anything to do with what’s going on here?

            • Steeve@lemmy.ca
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              3
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              Google still has fully remote employees, they’re asking non remote employees back into the office a few days a week. Last I heard you can still apply to transfer to fully remote.

  • Thales@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    107
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    The advertisement entices workers to make the jump, even for a short while, to its on-campus hotel, saying: “Just imagine no commute to the office in the morning and instead, you could have an extra hour of sleep and less friction,” CNBC reported.

    Did these stupid motherfuckers read their own ad??

    No commute and extra sleep? That sounds great!

    No wonder everyone is trying to WFH - the very same reasons you just listed.

    • MrSqueezles@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      25
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      This hotel has been there for a while for visiting employees, paid for by the company. People wanted this option if, for example, you lived in Brazil, wanted to visit the US, but didn’t have any reason to book a business trip because you don’t work with anyone at headquarters. I’m going to guess that most paying guests won’t be reporting for work during their stays, but will be grabbing a solid 3 meals a day, plus snacks.

  • o_o@lemmy.fmhy.net
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    87
    ·
    1 year ago

    It may be cheaper than a hotel or apartment, but why should an employee have to pay to go to work when they could be working remotely?

    • Noughmad@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      32
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      You commit 16 lines, what do you get?

      Another day older and deeper in debt

      St. Peter, don’t you call me 'cause I can’t go

      I owe my soul to the company store

      • AbsentBird@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        17
        ·
        1 year ago

        Some people say a man is made outta blood. A code monkey’s made out of Fritos and crud. Fritos and crud and skin and bone. A back that’s weak and a mind that’s strong…

    • atticus88th@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      29
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Sounds illegal until I realized its tech workers who refuse to unionize and think they are getting paid bank but to live like a virtual slave.

      • nickwitha_k (he/him)@lemmy.sdf.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        24
        ·
        1 year ago

        As one in the industry, it’s incredibly frustrating. Colleagues have been saying “oh, we get all of these perks and get nice salaries, we don’t need a union” while others are bucket-crabbing with “you make big money, why do you need a union?”, both overlooking the immense amounts of unpaid overtime that are endemic. Then, there’s the push for RTO, which does nothing to benefit employees and would be readily prevented by strong unions.

      • STUPIDVIPGUY@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        1 year ago

        it’s very easy to ignore social inequities if you spend all your time working for a shitty company making absolute bank

      • Lev_Astov@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        1 year ago

        A lot of companies used to run company towns. Toyota still does, as far as I know. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a return of that sort of thing with real estate prices getting absurd and companies wanting to drive people back into the office.

    • ProvableGecko@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      13
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      No no you don’t understand. It’s work from home but work IS the home! You see it makes perfect sense.

    • Roboticide@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      1 year ago

      Hah, I actually did that when I first started working for a small company.

      The co-founder also rented out a house he owned as a duplex.

      Actually wasn’t that bad, he charged slightly below market rate, and was pretty attentive. But definitely felt weird and I was happy to move out after a few years. It’s just an unnecessary source of potential drama.

      Now my manager lives there, and has for five years.

    • meeeeetch@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      1 year ago

      The good that comes from that, from the perspective of the boss-landlord is that if your employee-tenants start getting the idea to strike, you control both their income and their shelter, so they reconsider.

      Then you offer on-site housing to your scabs.

    • IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      17
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      This is unfortunately really common in East-Asia. Samsung employees live in Samsung apartments, ride the Samsung metro to work, pay for things with their Samsung wallet, while they listen to Samsung controlled news. Google would love to become the Samsung of the West.

        • FaeDrifter@midwest.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          10
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          Where does Samsung’s money come from? Like all corporations it comes from extracting the value of its laborers. If you’re working for Samsung, you are paying for the Samsung services, even if it’s not directly apparent.

          • HughJanus@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            I mean if you wanna play it like that, the money all comes from the consumers, so they should be allowed to stay in Samsung’s hotels for free, right?

  • inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    58
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    Next up will be these tech companies offering company script to buy things at the company store while paying that rent to the company room. You know, to help transition into the new indentured working environment.

  • daninet@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    48
    ·
    1 year ago

    Wait till they start 3 shift bed rotation like in chinese factories. For the discounted price of 59.99