Despite supporting the policy of sharing desks for cloud employees, Google CEO Sundar Pichai still reminded that real estate prices are getting more and more expensive.
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Mr. Sundar Pichai supports the policy of sharing desks at the company. Photo: Bloomberg . |
CNBC reported that during an internal meeting last week, Mr. Sundar Pichai described some of Google ‘s offices as nearly empty.
“Many people often complain that they come to the office and see a lot of empty tables. This makes the office feel like a ‘ghost town’. It was really not a good experience,” Pichai said.
In fact, last month, Google asked employees and cloud partners to share desks at the company’s five largest US offices, including New York and San Francisco.
In Alphabet’s financial report for the fourth quarter of 2022, published in early February, management expected Google to incur a cost of about $ 500 million to shrink office space globally. The decision comes amid concerns about slowing revenue growth and an ongoing economic downturn.
Pichai claims a lot of people come to the office “just two days a week”. Thereby, the CEO of Google believes that employees are using the space inefficiently.
“We should manage our financial resources well. The company has expensive real estate. If employees only spend 30% of their time working at the company, we will have to carefully rethink the problem,” Mr. Pichai said.
According to Anas Osman, vice president of strategy at Google Cloud, about a third of employees come to the office at least four days a week.
“Data from our experiments shows that Googlers are better able to collaborate when they have a set workday in the office, even when the shared desk policy is in place,” said Mr. Osman. shall.
Pichai said the new desk-sharing policy only applies to employees in Google’s cloud division. Now the company “allows teams to experiment freely”. The cloud division now accounts for about a quarter of the tech company’s employees.
Real estate prices can be a significant concern for companies, especially those with a large number of employees and a physical office presence. As real estate prices rise, it can become more expensive for companies to maintain a physical office or expand their office space. This can lead to higher operating costs and can impact a company’s bottom line.
The policy of sharing desks for cloud employees is one way that companies like Google can reduce their real estate costs. By allowing employees to share desk space and work remotely, Google can reduce the amount of office space that it needs to maintain. This can help to lower real estate costs and can enable Google to redirect those resources towards other areas of the business.
However, as the CEO’s comment suggests, rising real estate prices can still pose a challenge for companies like Google, even with policies like desk sharing in place. While desk sharing can help to mitigate some of the costs associated with maintaining a physical office, it may not be enough to offset the impact of rapidly rising real estate prices in certain markets.
As a result, companies like Google may need to consider a range of strategies to manage their real estate costs, including negotiating leases, optimizing office layouts, and exploring alternative office locations. Ultimately, the goal is to balance the needs of the business with the costs of maintaining a physical office presence, in order to ensure long-term sustainability and success.
