Google Tells All North America Staff To Work From Home (bloomberg.com) 29
Alphabet's Google told its staff in North America to not go into their offices unless they have to, becoming one of the latest companies seeking to protect workers from the spreading coronavirus. From a report: The Mountain View, California-based tech giant is "recommending" workers stay home until at least April 10, according to an internal memo seen by Bloomberg. The company had already sent home its Seattle-area workers, where the virus has had the highest number of cases in the U.S.
The note also told contract workers, which make up as much as half of the company's overall workforce, to work from home if they were able. Google also said last week it would keep paying the thousands of hourly workers who do jobs such as serving food, cleaning offices and providing security, through the crisis. Amazon, Twitter, Microsoft, and a slew of other major tech companies are also encouraging employees to work from home to prevent the spread of the virus.
The note also told contract workers, which make up as much as half of the company's overall workforce, to work from home if they were able. Google also said last week it would keep paying the thousands of hourly workers who do jobs such as serving food, cleaning offices and providing security, through the crisis. Amazon, Twitter, Microsoft, and a slew of other major tech companies are also encouraging employees to work from home to prevent the spread of the virus.
It's A Pandemic Then (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It's A Pandemic Then (Score:4, Funny)
You're absolutely right! At work we use Google Docs and Gmail!
I'm sending an email to my boss, to tell him that our boss told us to work from home.
Professor? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Kent Brockman: Professor, without knowing precisely what the danger is, would you say it's time for our viewers to crack each other's heads open and feast on the goo inside?
Professor: Yes I would, Kent.
Could be a big boon for teleworking (Score:4, Insightful)
I have to think that after an extended period of having so many large companies having people work from home, that teleworking will become a much more widespread option going forward.
To me it just seems prudent to have everyone who can work at home do so... To me that just seems like caution instead of overreaction.
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Could be boon for offshoring :( (Score:5, Interesting)
teleworking will become a much more widespread option going forward.
Careful what you wish for. If your job can be done from home, someone in your company thinks it can be done from India or some other county. I'm not saying it's bad to work from home for fears of the pandemic. I just worry that some pieces of human garbage are getting bad ideas about outsourcing/offshoring that have been disproven long ago. I have it on good authority that within every tech company, there's some terrible excuse for a human being MBA pitching moving operations to another continent or just doing subtle things like expanding the overseas office while cutting hiring locally. They never learn. They have no incentive to learn. When their plan fails, they find a new job, enjoy their Tata/Infosys kickbacks, and wreck another company.
Anyone who has ever done anything useful in life knows that offshoring office work, particularly software engineering, almost never saves money, but if my company tells everyone to work from home (and they kind of have already and I think they will proclaim it more boldy this week), I know that if things aren't too disrupted, I'll be hearing for 2 years, at least, "can we do that overseas?"
This will not make my life easier. This will make it harder. Fortunately, most of my coworkers seem to think WFH means half day, so it looks like the schedule impact will be pretty huge...so maybe I am worrying for nothing.
Re:Could be boon for offshoring :( (Score:5, Insightful)
My company offshored a small project just under a year ago -- it was fully scoped out and would have been a 3 month project if done in-house by a team of 3 engineers. With 9 offshore employees (7 developers one manager, one PM) along with a local PM, the project still isn't done (mostly due to UI issues (the UI is nearly unusable do the internal customers that would use it), but also some integration issues with the local systems)
I'm not too worried about my job getting offshored. The offshored engineers get paid a fraction of the local engineers, but deliver a smaller fraction of the work.
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My company offshored a small project just under a year ago -- it was fully scoped out and would have been a 3 month project if done in-house by a team of 3 engineers. With 9 offshore employees (7 developers one manager, one PM) along with a local PM, the project still isn't done (mostly due to UI issues (the UI is nearly unusable do the internal customers that would use it), but also some integration issues with the local systems)
I'm not too worried about my job getting offshored. The offshored engineers get paid a fraction of the local engineers, but deliver a smaller fraction of the work.
Do the people who made that decision agree with your assessment and feel they learned a lesson though? Your story certainly rings true with me given my experience with outsourced projects, but if people making these decisions don't feel like it was a loss overall then they'll just continue to do the same thing. The corporate world is replete with stories of managers who continuously to make decisions their employees know are short sighted and generally bad because the manager doesn't see it that way.
Perso
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Yup, we're being told that we can hire 1 person locally, or 2 persons in a Eastern European office, of 4 persons from the India office. And of course we want the 1 person locally who is going to be more productive than the other options. Let's face it, the 4 people in the India office are there because they weren't able to get a better job in the US or Europe. And that's the offshoring, meaning they are our employees, as opposed to outsourcing to contractors which gets even worse.
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[sarc]
the master plan is working!
while all you suckers are staying home, I can now go out and do donuts on route 101. bwahahahaha!
[/sarc]
seriously, this will clear out the local roads. not a bad thing. good on google for (finally) telling its people to stay home until we get a handle on this.
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I have to think that after an extended period of having so many large companies having people work from home, that teleworking will become a much more widespread option going forward.
I'm kinda curious who's going to wind up winners and losers over this. Airlines? Losers. Princess Cruise Line? Doomed as the Titanic. Zoom? Making out like bandits.
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This reminds me of the Northridge earthquake. For a month or two LA had set up several remote work sites so that people could pop in, have desks, phones, and internet, and still be able to work. But those were shut down after awhile and everyone had to go back to the long commutes.
The problem for many is that it's difficult to work from home when your job isn't just paper pushing or staring at a screen. Even tech workers often need lab space, devices, test equipment, etc.
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Re: Who will be the 1st celebrity to die from COVI (Score:3)
With all the likely presidential candidates in their 70s (a higher risk of death group) on top of needing to go around pressing hands, there might indeed be a problem for the election!
In related news ... (Score:5, Funny)
now is the opportunity... (Score:2)
That's a diplomatic way to put it (Score:2)
So they got told off
Google copying again! (Score:2)
Apple tells their staff to work from home, now Google does the same! Typical! /sarcasm
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Apple tells their staff to work from home, now Google does the same! Typical! /sarcasm
Apple only told employees to work from home for the week, Google said 'till April 10th, so Google did it better.
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Google said 'till April 10th, so Google did it better.
Too bad Google didn't say 'till April 20. I guess Salesforce has an opportunity here...
Will the contract workers really get that pay??? (Score:2)
Will the contract workers really get that pay???
What if they have to punch the local clock?
Still get the full 40 hours?
Re: Will the contract workers really get that pay? (Score:2)
I guess it matters if you are a contract worker.
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Will the contract workers really get that pay???
What if they have to punch the local clock?
Still get the full 40 hours?
Didn't they already answer that question when they announced the work from home policy?
The note also told contract workers, which make up as much as half of the company’s overall workforce, to work from home if they were able. Google also said last week it would keep paying the thousands of hourly workers who do jobs such as serving food, cleaning offices and providing security, through the crisis.
Why would they write that if they weren't going to do it? Do you think they'd shortchange these workers who would just ignore it even though they had it in writing?
They're going to keep paying site-staff? (Score:2)
Okay, I can understand the remote work.
The fact that they're going to keep paychecks rolling to people whose job it is to COME IN every day is going to be EXPENSIVE for them, but that's admirable as hell!
Employee Loyalty Meter firmly in the green on that.
Finally! (Score:2)
We are finally going to find out just how many Google employees in the bay area have been living in their cars.