Google asks some employees to share desks amid office downsizing

Google is asking cloud workers and companions to share their desks and alternate days with their desk-mates beginning subsequent quarter, citing “real estate efficiency,” CNBC has realized.

The new desk-sharing mannequin will apply to Google Cloud’s 5 largest U.S. areas — Kirkland, Washington; New York; San Francisco; Seattle and Sunnyvale, Calif. — and is occurring so the corporate “can continue to invest in Cloud’s growth,” based on an inner FAQ not too long ago shared with cloud workers and seen by CNBC. Some buildings will probably be vacated consequently, the doc notes. 

“Most Googlers will now share a desk with one other Googler,” the inner doc states, noting that they anticipate workers to come back in on alternate days so they are not on the identical desk on the identical day. “Through the matching process, they will agree on a basic desk setup and establish norms with their desk partner and teams to ensure a positive experience in the new shared environment.”

For anybody coming in on their unassigned days, they’ll use “overflow drop-in space.”

Internally, management has given the brand new seating association a title: “Cloud Office Evolution” or “CLOE,” which it describes as “combining the best of pre-pandemic collaboration with the flexibility” from hybrid work. The new workspace plan is not a temporary pilot, the document notes. “This will ultimately lead to more efficient use of our space.”

Google also used its internal data it has on it its employee office return patterns to inform the decision, the FAQ stated. In addition to slower office return patterns, the company has slowed hiring and laid off 11,000 employees in January. 

Memes started showing up in the company’s meme platform Memegen, poking fun at the change — specifically targeting the “corpspeak” used by leadership to tout the new desk arrangement in what they viewed to be a cost-cutting measure.

“Not each cost-cutting measure must be phrase mangled into sounding good for workers,” one popular meme read layered on a photo of a bird putting his hand on his head. “A easy ‘We are chopping workplace area to cut back prices’ would make management sound extra plausible.”

Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The move comes as Google downsizes its real estate footprint amid broader cost-cutting. However, it hasn’t yet specified regions or buildings it plans on downsizing.

In its Q4 2022 earnings call, Google executives said it expects to incur costs of about $500 million related to reduced global office space in Q1, and warned that other real-estate charges are possible going forward. Earlier this month, SFGate reported the company will be ending leases for “a number of unoccupied spaces” in the San Francisco Bay Area, the region where its headquarters are located.  

The cloud unit, which makes up more than a quarter of Google’s full-time workforce, is among the highest-growth areas at the company, but is not profitable.

In the fourth quarter, Google Cloud brought in $7.32 billion, growing 32% from the prior year, considerably faster than the company’s overall growth rate of less than10%. But that revenue figure was less than Wall Street consensus expected, and the Cloud business is still losing hundreds of millions of dollars every quarter — $480 million in Q4, although that was nearly half of the loss a year prior.

Overall, however, Google earned $13.62 billion in net income during the quarter, and $59.97 billion for all of 2022. Both were significant drops from 2021.

Under the brand new association, groups of 200 to 300 workers “and partners” will probably be organized into “neighborhoods,” which will additionally embody “partner teams that are a part of other organizations, such as Finance, People Operations, etc,” the FAQ learn. Each neighborhood could have a VP or director who will probably be chargeable for allocating area within the neighborhood. 

Employees will typically alternate days they’re within the workplace, both Monday and Wednesday, or Tuesday and Thursday. They will probably be in two days per week, a change from the corporate requiring workers to come back in three days per week.

“Neighborhood leads are encouraged to set norms with their teams around sharing desks, ensuring that pairings of Googlers have conversations about how they will or will not decorate the space, store personal items, and tidiness expectations.”

In addition, the FAQ stated that workers with pc workstations will not have these workstations positioned straight underneath their desks, however as a substitute must search for its location in a database or put in a ticket for troubleshooting. Over time, workers are anticipated to transition to CloudHigh, a digital desktop device that is to this point reserved just for Google workers.

The FAQ stated it should even be placing a cap on variety of rooms to be taken for conferences, noting convention rooms are “already difficult to book.” Employees will probably be discouraged from “camping” in a convention room, it provides.

As for Covid-19, desks will probably be sanitized every day and workers will get a notification if somebody of their space exams optimistic and reviews it to Google.