Cuts at Google will force employees to share jobs and work in shifts in the office

Dozens of Google employees will reportedly be forced to share desktops as the tech giant cuts office space as part of budget cuts.

According to an internal memo obtained by CNBC, employees at Google’s money-losing cloud division will also be asked to come to the office on separate days so they don’t cross paths with their desk colleagues.

The mandate, which goes into effect next quarter at offices in New York, Seattle, San Francisco, Sunnyvale, California, and Kirkland, Washington, will allow the company to “continue to invest in the growth of Cloud,” the memo says.

“The majority of Google employees will now share a table with another Google employee,” the memo says.

“Through the alignment process, they will agree on a basic desktop setup and establish norms with their desktop partner and teams to ensure a positive experience in the new shared environment,” the memorandum states.


Google
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the cuts would allow the company to focus on its priorities.
AP

The document says that Google will vacate some office space as part of this initiative. Employees who decide to come to the office on an unscheduled day will be placed in a “crowded reception area”.

Affected workers will be required to work at the facility two days a week instead of the three-day requirement introduced under Google’s return-to-the-office plan.

Google will reportedly be referring to teams in its Google Cloud division as “districts,” which will set standards for the desktop sharing plan, such as how workers can decorate their workspaces.


Google
Google employees in the cloud division will work together.
Bloomberg via Getty Images

During a teleconference this month, Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat said the company “expects to incur costs of approximately $500 million related to exiting leases to bring our office space in line with our adjusted global headcount.”

Porat did not specify which offices could be closed as a result of the effort, which she called an attempt to “optimize” Google’s “real estate footprint.”

A Google spokesperson told The Post that the company has developed a plan based on the results of internal pilot projects and employee surveys regarding hybrid work.

“Our data shows that cloud Googlers value guaranteed in-person collaboration when they’re in the office, as well as the ability to work from home multiple days a week,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

“With this feedback, we have developed our new rotating model, combining the best of pre-pandemic collaboration with the flexibility and focus that we all value from working remotely, while also allowing us to make better use of our spaces.” statement added.

The agreement is already causing some complaints among Google employees. The grumbling included a number of critical posts on Memegen, one of Google’s internal forums.

“Not every cost-cutting measure needs to be twisted to sound good to employees,” one post reads, according to CNBC. “A simple ‘We’re downsizing office space to cut costs’ would make the leadership more believable.”

The desktop sharing plan comes just weeks after Google’s parent company Alphabet laid off employees, laying off about 12,000 employees, or roughly 6% of the total workforce. Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the cuts are needed so the company can focus on its AI priorities and other emerging areas.

Google has laid off more than two dozen full-time massage therapists in its home state of California as part of a belt-tightening effort.

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