Alphabet donates its employees' holiday gifts to charity | Hacker News Reader

Alphabet donates its employees' holiday gifts to charity

fortune.com

Giving away money earmarked for employee appreciation to charity doesn't get Google points with the press, or their staff. This isn't a good move by Google.

Employees don't depend on Christmas gifts, but they are certainly nice. It's a great time for the company to say, with a simple little gesture, "Thanks, we really appreciate you."

The company can also give money to charity... not like Google has a shortage of money.

But yeah, this... it comes off as telling the Google Employees, "You're a bunch of ungrateful, over-privileged, spoiled brats... so I gave your gifts to people who would appreciate them more."

It's kinda funny how they spun it to employees, because what happened here, is Google bought itself a tax write-off. The article misses that when it suggests that it's "not exactly a cost-saving move".

And I mean, heck, I don't work at a Fortune 500, but my company gave me a Christmas gift worth more than a Google Home.

I don't know much about corporate taxes, but isn't a charity donation the same tax write-off as a Christmas gift to employees, if they cost the same?

And is either of those different than the write-off for business-related costs? In other words, do corporate taxes look at more than "total revenue - total costs"?

I also don't know too much about corporate taxes, but I'm pretty sure there's some benefits to giving to actual charities that goes beyond a regular business expense. "Total revenue - total costs" is the sort of tax a business can pay if their revenue is small and simple. Once you get into itemized taxes, there's all sorts of tax credits and such.

As an additional note, all the schools Google have these Google-tied products to will be bound to Google's service products, so, it benefits them in that way as well.

> all the schools Google have these Google-tied products to will be bound to Google's service products, so, it benefits them in that way as well.

I mean, yeah obviously. But I wouldn't really expect Google to give MacBooks or Windows notebooks to those schools, and it probably would be a worse option even if they did.

As someone living with a student plagued by a school-issued Chromebook, I beg to differ. Especially for a student that could run AutoCAD and similar useful software even on a very cheap Windows PC.

The point is, it's really not a "gift". They gave themselves a tax break, by "donating" some hardware that ensures them future business via services. It takes some hardcore groupthink to be convinced that it's otherwise.

> It's really not a "gift".

> It takes some hardcore groupthink to be convinced that it's otherwise.

lol so you'd rather your school not be able to afford issuing your kid any laptop whatsoever? Do the teachers at your school want the kids to use AutoCAD, but someone forced them to buy Chromebooks?

More than half the schools are voting for this with their money already http://www.cnbc.com/2015/12/03/googles-chromebooks-make-up-h... If your Google conspiracy is true, why is the company so cunning, but at the same time dumb enough not to extend the gift to all schools?

It's actually funny you mentioned the CNBC article as a source: It's junk. They made one correction a year ago when I pointed out all the flaws in it, and the article is still misleading. ;) Futuresource intentionally cherry-picked data, basically by excluding... well, most of the PCs schools buy categorically.

The biggest problem is the lock-in. Given that Google has them in on all of their hardware, mail, docs, classroom platform, once you decide to go the cheap route, because $200 laptops sound like a good idea, it's really hard to escape. You guys are basically the 90s Microsoft of the 10s.

>The point is, it's really not a "gift". They gave themselves a tax break, by "donating" some hardware that ensures them future business via services. It takes some hardcore groupthink to be convinced that it's otherwise.

Corporations are taxed on profit not revenue. A charity gift is treated as an expense, just as a holiday gift is or company issued laptops or shuttle rides or free food.

Source: http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-does-corpor...

You should probably do some research before you comment :\.

If Alphabet wants to do goodwill marketing, so be it. But doing so at the expense of their employees is kinda shitty. Did employees at least have the option to select which charity to donate to?

no, they did not

They didn't announce it so is it really marketing?

It's more effective marketing when people don't believe it's marketing.

What's the average salary at Google? Does getting a Google Home or even a Pixel (which they can easily afford imho) really mean something to the employee?

Probably not, but it's a nice thing to do. Telling everyone you're giving their gift to someone else is honestly kind of a nasty thing to do, even if it's a donation. It actually would've been less bad if they didn't tell their employees their gift was going elsewhere.

I'm pretty happy about it to be honest. The previous years they always let us choose the "give it to charity" option and I never did. But I much rather a kid in a poor school get a chromebook, than I get a gadget I can afford.

It's kind of like paying income taxes vs giving to charities. I'd probably vote for my taxes to go up more than I would increase tomorrow my private donations, it's psychologically easier.

Let me put this another way: Do you believe Google can only afford to do one or the other? Can't they treat their employees well and donate to charity?

Oh I'm positive the company can afford both. In fact, my understanding is that their "regular" donations to charity, as in apart from this holiday gift, is many many times the value of the gift.

Don't get me wrong, if they donated all those things, and gave me some gadget, I'd be happy. But with a cool head, I rather the cost of that gadget be added to the donation too.

The previous years they always let us choose the "give it to charity" option and I never did. But I much rather a kid in a poor school get a chromebook... I'd probably vote for my taxes to go up more... it's psychologically easier.

Was clicking a 'give it to charity' option too psychologically hard?

I'm not sure what part of my point you didn't understand.

> Pixel

To be fair, Google is a global company and as a result has employees in other countries. Do those people in other countries, like India or China, make decent salaries for their location? Yes, absolutely... But for an entry-level engineer at Google in India or China my guess is that it would take a few weeks salary to pay for a Pixel phone.

Not sure how to feel about this one. On one hand the people who end up with the gifts will be grateful I'm sure. On the other hand it was at the expense of the employees, who had no say in it. Maybe they should have been given the option to donate or receive on a person-to-person basis?

I always thought Google gave out hardware strategically because they wanted every engineer to easily do side projects targeting, e.g., a phone with up-to-date Android and a smartwatch. I wonder if this means end-user adoption is now more important.

Nah, as an employee you probably already have a corporate phone, and I'm sure you can get a corporate smartwatch too without problem. So it wouldn't really be an effective strategy.

TBH my theory is that Google gave surplus inventory to their employees with previous holiday gifts (and my understanding is that different countries got different holiday gifts).

The Pixel phone supply chain is really tight considering you can't even get a 128GB phone right now.

Google Homes seemed to have sold quite well this holiday season as well so the prospect of conjuring 68000 Google Homes and dispersing them across the world to the 100+ offices at Google was probably a bit logistically taxing.

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