This is a hotel that is cheaper than other hotels around, and allows someone to live in a city hours away, and just commute to the expensive city for the 3 in-office days.
Median rent for a 1 bedroom in mountainview is $3.6k
Median salary for google is $280k. Some of that is stock so let's say, so $20k, and after taxes $13k/mo. Take out match for 401k, health plan deductions and real take home around $9-10k/mo.
No need for a car or an apartment. Food, gymn, and laundry are free, so only expense left is clothing.
That's an amazing deal given the network effects of other perks, especially considering no need to commute. If you're young and single it's really a no-brainer.
It's cheaper until the promo rate expires (in 4 days?) or cost otherwise rises just 20%.
I thought Google ended free meals and laundry.
Who else wants all their home internet traffic routing through their employer? At least workers won't be stuck with a long apartment lease at the next Google layoff. They can conveniently collect their box of belongings on the sidewalk when they lose their job.
Isn't this aimed specifically at people who are hybrid? I'd love something like this, personally. Have my house outside the city, travel in for 3 days 2 nights each week for work. This seems absolutely reasonable to me, although I kinda think they should offer it for free, but I don't know the legal ramifications of that.
I took it the same way. I work at a 100% remote company with folks across the US and Europe. We don't have an office anywhere, but if we did, this would be a compelling way to take a short trip + meet some coworkers.
That sounds terrible to me. I want to be home every night. Not living at work for 3 days straight. What do you do, bring all your hobbies and shit with you, or do you just go to the hotel and keep working all night until bed?
I might do something like that if I got Fridays off or something like that. Otherwise, I want to get as far away from work as possible during my free time.
I slept in an apartment above my office in London for two nights a week over four years, commuting from York (3 hours door-to-door).
Each week I spent the three days in the office working very long hours, and then had a nice relaxing couple of days at home, working a bit but also being a very active dad, since my wife did everything with the kids whilst I was away.
This worked really well for us. Now my wife is doing the same and working in London 3 days a week. Still working well.
Free time when you’re at work just gets shifted to when you’re at home.
A gentle reminder -- this is a hotel. If you are the kind of person who can regularly spend nearly 1/3 of your nights living in a hotel where you don't have a kitchen, a (real) fridge, carefully selected and arranged furniture, wardrobe, game console/musical instruments/etc, good for you, maybe should even consider a job as a consultant. To most people it is a horrible idea.
A lot of people used to live out of hotels. During the gilded age, a lot of rich people would do that, like Tesla (well, he wasn't rich by then, but had a rich benefactor). Short stays in inns probably weren't common until the 20th century.
This is no different from company towns back a hundred fifty years ago. I wouldn't want to have to be entirely reliant on the company for food and shelter.
It's common in China, rural workers in dorm style housing. Occasionally go back home.
Google employees can have a morning exercise together and sing songs about how great Google is. It will boost moral and productivity which is good for the share price.
barely related but I used to commute 60/90 minutes for an entry level tech job in orange county (I lived inland where it was more industrial and was chasing opportunity). Sometimes we'd have client network outages that left us in office until late night/early morning, twice I tried to sleep at the office instead of driving home.
first time was in my car and was kicked out of the parking lot by security, I probably should have protested more
second time was curled up against a wall in our equipment room, and the poor cleaning lady let out a shout when she discovered me haha
on one hand a company hotel seems kind of perverse to me, on the other its cheaper than the super 8 was in 2010, and I probably would have taken a $99 room over the commute every now and then
Large employers in Germany will enforce the max 10 hour rule for non-managers not from the goodness of their hearts or because they don’t want to be stuck paying overtime, but because here, they have a good chance of having at least some of the liability if you are involved in an accident.
When my skip-level’s boss spotted me in the office at 7pm during a very serious outage, and told him that I’d been there since 6, he commended my efforts and insisted I take a cab home and have them bill the company directly, no matter how far away home was, and stated that I was under no circumstance to set foot on company property before 8am the next day, and that I needed to have at least 10 hours between arriving home and leaving for work the next morning.
I actually see this could be a useful thing. A hybrid worker that needs to get into the office a couple of times per week would leverage this to stay a night or two, particularly if their commute was otherwise fairly long.
Let's say that someone's commute would be over an hour long, but they have some ability to work from home. On the days that they need to be in office, staying the night at a reasonably priced company hotel might bring a lot of value.
I don't know, I do this exact thing right now in my current employment. I've got kids and spouse at home, fully invested in their lives, and still trying to grow my career. This situation works very well for me, since I live in the boonies outside a tech metro hotspot (not SV). I don't think it's necessarily just for "young single" types.
The hospital my mom is a nurse for is currently building an apartment building next door for the workers that can't afford the rent in a small Ohio city.
In 1980s in a communist country my dad was a truck driver. His (state-owned) company built a whole apartment building for their employees. This is where I lived for first few years of my life.
An on-campus hotel sounds pretty great for employees visiting from other countries. When I was working at Facebook, sometimes every hotel near Menlo Park would be sold out during times like conferences when many people were coming in from out of town. You could end up having an hour commute, when you're just in California for a few days. Business travel is already stressful, and adding in a bunch of commute time just makes it worse.
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[ 0.18 ms ] story [ 334 ms ] threadIt won't be company scrip because they'll have an app for it. Think of how "disruptive" that new innovation will be!
written in company script
No need for a car or an apartment. Food, gymn, and laundry are free, so only expense left is clothing.
That's an amazing deal given the network effects of other perks, especially considering no need to commute. If you're young and single it's really a no-brainer.
Personally, my stomach churns at the idea of having your entire life and identity tied up in a job.
I thought Google ended free meals and laundry.
Who else wants all their home internet traffic routing through their employer? At least workers won't be stuck with a long apartment lease at the next Google layoff. They can conveniently collect their box of belongings on the sidewalk when they lose their job.
I might do something like that if I got Fridays off or something like that. Otherwise, I want to get as far away from work as possible during my free time.
Each week I spent the three days in the office working very long hours, and then had a nice relaxing couple of days at home, working a bit but also being a very active dad, since my wife did everything with the kids whilst I was away.
This worked really well for us. Now my wife is doing the same and working in London 3 days a week. Still working well.
Free time when you’re at work just gets shifted to when you’re at home.
Funnily enough, Google offices provide these to employees.
The core problem with a company town is them having control over the entire town.
Except that you can sell whatever stock you get. It's also real money with essentially zero barrier to conversion. Not including it is weird.
first time was in my car and was kicked out of the parking lot by security, I probably should have protested more
second time was curled up against a wall in our equipment room, and the poor cleaning lady let out a shout when she discovered me haha
on one hand a company hotel seems kind of perverse to me, on the other its cheaper than the super 8 was in 2010, and I probably would have taken a $99 room over the commute every now and then
Your employer should have done this for you, and paid the bill. At some point there is liability as it’s a safety hazard.
When my skip-level’s boss spotted me in the office at 7pm during a very serious outage, and told him that I’d been there since 6, he commended my efforts and insisted I take a cab home and have them bill the company directly, no matter how far away home was, and stated that I was under no circumstance to set foot on company property before 8am the next day, and that I needed to have at least 10 hours between arriving home and leaving for work the next morning.
Let's say that someone's commute would be over an hour long, but they have some ability to work from home. On the days that they need to be in office, staying the night at a reasonably priced company hotel might bring a lot of value.
Side note: which companies offer on site day care?
After all spending night after night in a hotel sucks.
I'm a little concerned about these developments.