Google backs out of plan to build 20,000 Bay Area homes over "market conditions"
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Silicon Valley has been an expensive place to live for a while now, and Google wanted to help put a dent in the situation by addressing what...

Google backs out of plan to build 20,000 Bay Area homes, over “market conditions”::undefined

  • Steve@lemmy.todayEnglish
    49·
    1 year ago

    For a company that has a reputation of announcing and releasing ambitious projects only to cancel or send them into a “graveyard”, this does not surprise me. I do not discount the current housing market as a factor leading into this decision, but regardless, I wasn’t expecting much to happen.

    Also, I do find the following a bit suspect:

    What’s more, the pandemic reshaped ideas about work and opened the door to work-from-home opportunities. Companies are slowly getting people back into the office, but working from a central location isn’t the necessity it once was for many. This means folks taking jobs in Silicon Valley don’t necessarily have to move as deep into the city as they once did, allowing them to live a bit further out from town and avoid the premium real estate market.

    Wasn’t Google one of the numerous tech companies that demanded their employees to return back to office?

    • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
      182·
      1 year ago

      Don’t think Google made that demand, but I may be wrong.

      I work for a software dev, and it’s heavenly. We’re pretty much all remote since the pandemic, but we’ve contracted back to a single office/headquarters, which is often nearly empty. But it’s a nice place when we need to pull together.

      My team was out to dinner with the CEO and VPs one night and the CEO was discussing the virtues of in-person office work. And yes, there are solid benefits to collaborating in person, many benefits. I don’t believe they outweigh WFH in general, especially for a company like ours. The voluntary hybrid approach is working great for us.

      I related a story I found on reddit. Software dev recruiter was laughing about his “hit list”. He kept track of local companies starting to mandate a return to office. “LMAO, picking up those employees for WFH offers was like shooting fish in a barrel!” Quite the cautionary tale!

      • bitwaba@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        lots of Google teams in the bay area (and globally) have mandatory office days, but pretty much everything is 2 or 3 days a week in office while the rest is work from home.

      • BearOfaTime@lemm.eeEnglish
        31·
        1 year ago

        It’s definitely a challenge.

        Having worked in very large organizations, it’s hard to quantify the influence somewhat random interactions caused by running into someone in a cafeteria or walking down the hallway.

        I’ve had countless impromptu discussions about work that lead to productive changes.

        Then there’s the team angle - people really do work together better when they have this kind of engagement.

        Mind, I say this as someone who is exhausted by all that interaction, so much so that my calendar, every day, has blocks of scheduled “meetings” that are just downtime for me to do work by myself in a quiet space.