> The Google-owned hotel is situated on a newer campus in Mountain View, California, that it opened last year.
The Gizmodo article is comparing this to what Twitter did. Having a space that is actually run as a hotel is not the same as setting up bedrooms in an existing part of a building.
Based on the description in the article, I am reminded of the Stanford Guest House (https://rde.stanford.edu/stanford-guest-house), which is owned and run by Stanford, for the benefit of faculty, staff, students, and visitors. It is also run as a proper hotel.
It's in slightly better taste, and it's even arguably beneficial as an option if any employees actually want to do this, but I think ultimately it's the exact same sin: Normalizing the idea of sleeping at work. It's insidious.
It isn't oriented at local employees, probably. More like...hey some Googler from Seattle needs to visit Mountain View for a few days, and doesn't want to drive, where will they sleep?
It may be the exact same sin, but that's not the point I'm making.
Though TBH, as others note, I doubt this is normally meant for local employees. At some scale, it makes sense for a large company to have their own hotel (either run by them, or contracted out) to host employees traveling in.
And if you've got a hotel like that, you have a certain occupancy rate that separates profit and loss. Advertisements to local employees make sense, in such a situation.
It's not a bad comparison for their purposes, which is to look at two major tech companies who are trying to get their employees to sleep at work. I agree it's not identical, but it's valid in terms of common themes being discussed in tech, like lack of work-life balance and worker exploitation.
> who are trying to get their employees to sleep at work
I don't see it. It's optional. Google employees don't have to take up on the offer. The knee-jerk on this forum is always "worker exploitation" (not saying you're saying it's that, but speaking more generally to the sentiment here) but nothing about this says you can't exercise your own free will to choose your own hours. Just because you live close to the office doesn't mean you have to stay there. I currently live 15 mins from my office but I keep normal hours. Proximity to work has no bearing on anything except my own convenience.
If anything, I used to live a consultant life where I gave more of my life to my employer -- it was the name of the game. I was away many weeks from Mon-Thurs. I lived in Chicago but was working in a different city every month and had to be a plane several times a month -- that's more soul sucking (I practically lived out of ORD). That I didn't have a choice over. And when I landed, I didn't always get to stay near the office -- I always needed a rental car.
But this -- it sounds like a convenience. If I were a Google employee and moved away during COVID (say to San Luis Obispo) but had to RTO to Mountain View Tues-Thurs, I would appreciate having a place close to the office.
Back in the old days, prior to remote work, many people used to live this kind of life. They would live in a different city but commute in 3 days a week and stay at at rented apartment (they even have a name for it -- a "pied a terre"). This way folks got to work with a company in a less preferred geography but still get to live in a city they can enjoy on weekends.
A lot of universities in China have or used to have hotels on their campuses. It wasn't weird at all staying at a campus hotel at Peking University 20 or so years ago. It is seen as kind of old fashioned however (like hotels at similar company towns), so it is a bit surprising to see Google doing this (disclaimer: I work for Google, but not in Mountain View).
> Based on the description in the article, I am reminded of the Stanford Guest House (https://rde.stanford.edu/stanford-guest-house), which is owned and run by Stanford, for the benefit of faculty, staff, students, and visitors. It is also run as a proper hotel.
The Guest House is also explicitly for visiting guests of the university, like a visiting professor, a student's family, or a patient of the medical center. While the FAQ doesn't explicitly say that the university's own on-site staff are forbidden from staying, it's fairly clear from context that they aren't welcome.
True, but that can change depending on circumstances. For example, I believe that during the early days of Covid, a number of Hospital folks stayed at the Guest House, presumably to avoid passing an infection on to family.
My point is: There is often a difference between the stated policy on a website, and what is actually being implemented.
Google's expecting employees to be in 3 days a week. So if you need 2 nights at a hotel, thats $200/week * 52 weeks = $10k (minus some vacation time away). Not cheap but could really be much worse.
What a weird new attempt. The implication that some people just live at a hotel for the in-office part of their life is - still, I feel - like 20x better a quality of life than where we were pre-pandemic with commuting. But it's still bloody weird.
Maybe eventually some actual carrots arrive with this stick the companies are using. But unclear when or how that will happen, still.
> The implication that some people just live at a hotel for part of their life is still, I feel, like 20x better a quality of life than where we were pre-pandemic with commuting. But it's still bloody weird.
For a long time now, it's been not-weird for a lot of people.
Within the realm of tech jobs, it's not-weird at some large companies to have folks travel, so everyone crunching on one project can be together to work on it.
For certain types of IT equipment (mainframes, supercomputers, big tape libraries, and more), it's not weird for support and installing engineers to travel from location to location, working on service calls or new installs.
For electricians with high-voltage experience, it's not weird to travel to where a new data center is being built, or other facility that needs major electrical work done under time constraints.
And then your have pilots, railroaders, long-distance truckers, etc..
I'm upvoting because I see your point generally & it's good to keep in mind in general.
The main constrast is that those are all events. They're for a reason. This is a steady state situation: every week you'll come back to the Bay area, work a normal in office week, then leave. Not because there's any real reason, but just because those are the arbitrary rules.
I'm pretty convinced that my own bedroom in my own home is cheaper and more comfy, along the rest of the home and nature around it then an hotel... Oh, yes FTTH connection are good enough and my setup is good enough as well to WFH.
Corporate owned smart-city will be the next? https://global.toyota/en/newsroom/corporate/34827717.html | https://youtu.be/p-9X8Z2kJt8 well... Companies should consider a thing: those who buy their propagandized model are probably not smart enough to be valuable employees. Witch means they'll likely loosing money with their moves, directly and indirectly. Slaves do not work as good as free people.
The last time a company tried to get me to pay for my own room and travel expenses during "unapproved business travel" at their home office when it came time to expense it, I found a new job within a week.
My CEO called me, highly upset that I was leaving. I asked him what did he thing would happen when he's the one who requested my presence there in the first place. He wouldn't budge on the expenses, so I wouldn't budge on getting the fuck out of there.
Despite tech jobs being much better than 18th century coal mining, I think it might do us some good to pick up Zola's Germinal and remind ourselves that wholly attaching one's life to a corporation generally doesn't work out in our favor.
I'm really confused about responses here, feels like people just didn't read the whole article.
It's literally just a 2-month offer to make it easier for ppl to transition back to RTO (like in case they moved away and now they need to move back and find housing nearby). Google is not asking people to permanently live there.
Readit News
From the CNBC article (https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/04/google-offers-on-campus-hote...):
> The Google-owned hotel is situated on a newer campus in Mountain View, California, that it opened last year.
The Gizmodo article is comparing this to what Twitter did. Having a space that is actually run as a hotel is not the same as setting up bedrooms in an existing part of a building.
Based on the description in the article, I am reminded of the Stanford Guest House (https://rde.stanford.edu/stanford-guest-house), which is owned and run by Stanford, for the benefit of faculty, staff, students, and visitors. It is also run as a proper hotel.
> Just imagine no commute to the office in the morning and instead, you could have an extra hour of sleep and less friction
Cool, you mean by working from home?
No? Oh, you want me to home at work. Gross. People deserve a life away from work.
Though TBH, as others note, I doubt this is normally meant for local employees. At some scale, it makes sense for a large company to have their own hotel (either run by them, or contracted out) to host employees traveling in.
And if you've got a hotel like that, you have a certain occupancy rate that separates profit and loss. Advertisements to local employees make sense, in such a situation.
Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime.
That’s why I sleep on company time.
I don't see it. It's optional. Google employees don't have to take up on the offer. The knee-jerk on this forum is always "worker exploitation" (not saying you're saying it's that, but speaking more generally to the sentiment here) but nothing about this says you can't exercise your own free will to choose your own hours. Just because you live close to the office doesn't mean you have to stay there. I currently live 15 mins from my office but I keep normal hours. Proximity to work has no bearing on anything except my own convenience.
If anything, I used to live a consultant life where I gave more of my life to my employer -- it was the name of the game. I was away many weeks from Mon-Thurs. I lived in Chicago but was working in a different city every month and had to be a plane several times a month -- that's more soul sucking (I practically lived out of ORD). That I didn't have a choice over. And when I landed, I didn't always get to stay near the office -- I always needed a rental car.
But this -- it sounds like a convenience. If I were a Google employee and moved away during COVID (say to San Luis Obispo) but had to RTO to Mountain View Tues-Thurs, I would appreciate having a place close to the office.
Back in the old days, prior to remote work, many people used to live this kind of life. They would live in a different city but commute in 3 days a week and stay at at rented apartment (they even have a name for it -- a "pied a terre"). This way folks got to work with a company in a less preferred geography but still get to live in a city they can enjoy on weekends.
The Guest House is also explicitly for visiting guests of the university, like a visiting professor, a student's family, or a patient of the medical center. While the FAQ doesn't explicitly say that the university's own on-site staff are forbidden from staying, it's fairly clear from context that they aren't welcome.
https://rde.stanford.edu/stanford-guest-house/faq#Eligibilit...
My point is: There is often a difference between the stated policy on a website, and what is actually being implemented.
Google is not a university and their intentions are completely different. The fact that the dorms are nicer and look like a hotel doesn't change this.
I can't believe a software company is so bad at leaving people at home doing their work.
If they can't work from home something is wrong with how the company approach work. 10 people can often do what 100 is expected to do.
If people don't actually provide value fire them. I imagine Google easily could lay off a lot of people without any productivity change at all.
Same goes for all other corporate software companies. They are a labour intense communication hell.
What's next? A Google village ?
You almost got it. A software company is still a blood sucking company. Y’all get fooled all the time.
Apparently, they also suck at leaving people at home while they're off hours...
What a weird new attempt. The implication that some people just live at a hotel for the in-office part of their life is - still, I feel - like 20x better a quality of life than where we were pre-pandemic with commuting. But it's still bloody weird.
Maybe eventually some actual carrots arrive with this stick the companies are using. But unclear when or how that will happen, still.
For a long time now, it's been not-weird for a lot of people.
Within the realm of tech jobs, it's not-weird at some large companies to have folks travel, so everyone crunching on one project can be together to work on it.
For certain types of IT equipment (mainframes, supercomputers, big tape libraries, and more), it's not weird for support and installing engineers to travel from location to location, working on service calls or new installs.
For electricians with high-voltage experience, it's not weird to travel to where a new data center is being built, or other facility that needs major electrical work done under time constraints.
And then your have pilots, railroaders, long-distance truckers, etc..
The main constrast is that those are all events. They're for a reason. This is a steady state situation: every week you'll come back to the Bay area, work a normal in office week, then leave. Not because there's any real reason, but just because those are the arbitrary rules.
If google provided bedrooms for employees, they would be seen as a sweatshop.
Additionally, what if someone did "something" in their bedroom? Google might be responsible.
But if there is a hotel, and the employees pay, then what happens in the hotel room stays in the hotel room, especially legally.
Corporate owned smart-city will be the next? https://global.toyota/en/newsroom/corporate/34827717.html | https://youtu.be/p-9X8Z2kJt8 well... Companies should consider a thing: those who buy their propagandized model are probably not smart enough to be valuable employees. Witch means they'll likely loosing money with their moves, directly and indirectly. Slaves do not work as good as free people.
My CEO called me, highly upset that I was leaving. I asked him what did he thing would happen when he's the one who requested my presence there in the first place. He wouldn't budge on the expenses, so I wouldn't budge on getting the fuck out of there.
It's literally just a 2-month offer to make it easier for ppl to transition back to RTO (like in case they moved away and now they need to move back and find housing nearby). Google is not asking people to permanently live there.