Google has gotten so cheap, employees now have to share desks

Either you’re growing or finding efficiencies.

I guess I was referring to more optional type work like inventing their own frameworks and abstractions, refactors for code style, major rework of some in-house blob of code that could easily be done with an off the shelf library, etc.

They are more like a super well connected SSH client. I think you could probably get X11 / audio up on it but I’ve never had the need to.

Development on an internal fork of VS code (web page) which sets up all the build tooling for you to use your cloud top as your build eng. Includes ML based completion as well which is nice.

So if you have used VS code I’d imagine the accessibility is similar as audio is rendered locally?

You probably didn't work for a company that has a global network that is capable of running Youtube levels of traffic around the planet with the latency requirements of Google Ads.

I used to consult, and got at one point hired to explain to higher management, at a small but important "regulatory" government department, why 256kbps ADSL sucked for rdesktop (which was on a private ATM channel from the incumbent telco, very expensive, and also very bad, it was still ADSL over an ATM backbone, in 2005, supposedly it was more secure ...). Note 256kbps = 32 KB/sec. I'm not sure how much they paid, but the page describing the product at the telco said to call to make an appointment for sales to visit you to get some pricing info. Oh, and the backend connection for this had to be done in duplicate, with endpoints in 2 different countries. I'm pretty sure just the backend connections cost a decent house a month at minimum.

Needless to say, over 32 KB/sec, rdesktop is pretty much unusable. Not that said incumbent telco actually delivered 32 KB/sec, merely because they paid through the nose.

So I wrote a 40 page document, written in 12 days, for a just-barely-not-6-figure-bill. They had an excellent restaurant. Steak for 4 euro, and every week a different theme. Even the spaghetti bolognaise was excellent. Didn't do anything for the rest of 2 months, going in several times with my access badge just for the restaurant (to "discuss followup"). This went very slowly because of the top 3 levels of management, who had to approve everything, 2 were government appointed positions. These people never even came in because their performance and future at the company was only tied to their party's performance in elections, which had absolutely nothing to do with what this department was regulating.

Google can probably provide incredible remote desktops. Small companies can't, due to cost (not of the connection, hardware cost. Remote desktops, to be good, need to be machines running large VMs. That means modern i9s with 64G of ram MINIMUM). I'm not sure what Google uses, but ... Large companies and government can't, due to "best practices" preventing timely upgrades. This happens because they require everything be explained, risk-assessed, verified by external consultants, signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.

I’ve literally never had issues. So like 9/10. Works perfectly when on coffee shop wifi. Google tooling works perfectly with it.

I'm under the impression that the vast majority of people use their cloudtop over ssh and a remote vscode connection. I only ever use a remote gui for a few minutes every X weeks to do chrome-based auth for an nonstandard workflow.

The hilarious contradiction:

Companies: please come back to the office

Employees: why? Why have them at all? I don't have an "office" I have a small section of table. At home I have an office.

Companies: we invested money in these work spaces and want them to be used

Employees: you mean the shitty open space you moved to in order to save money rather than real "offices"? the ones that make us provably/demonstrably less productive than being at our home offices? If its about money, get rid of them entirely.

Companies: Um, yes. It helps build interaction and community

Employees: No, being shoved together like cattle breeds resentment and irritation and distraction and a feeling of no privacy or ability to think.

Companies: Just come back to the office. It's about buy-in

Employees: You mean the buy-in you refuse to provide for reasonable work spaces?

I despise them. I'm convinced that they became "cool" purely for two reasons:

1.) Bosses loved the feeling of superiority they had by having their own office but everyone else is sitting out in the open where they can easily see them all and bother them at a moment's notice.

2.) Fresh out of college grads would see them and get this feeling of a cool, buzzing, hypersocial hive that made them feel all good inside.

I wouldn't have made it through my last consulting gig without headphones/earbuds and a 45" (114 cm for the more enlightened measurement connoisseurs among us) ultrawide screen to block 95% of my view that I bought and brought in to the office.

Would you pay to keep inventory on the shelves when you could do JiT delivery of parts and keep expenditure on stocks at a minimum? Did not having spare capacity work out for car companies when the logistics chain was disrupted during Covid? I bring this up as an example because you seem to be(and this is entirely my interpretation that could be incorrect) implying that the spare capacity of the space per person is always a negative to be ruthlessly optimized out. I would posit that it has benefits like morale that need to be evaluated as a tradeoff. That's also ignoring the whole point that they demanded the workers return to the office and then didn't invest in making that possible, so now workers are dealing with the worst of both worlds.

>Nobody but the most OCD germophobe is going to have lower productivity because they are sitting in a desk that someone else was in a day before.

I wouldn't expect germaphobia to be the issue, it's the constant change that prevents employees from getting into a routine. We all already know that software engineers need to get into the zone to be productive, which takes time and becoming comfortable with what they are working on. How easy is that going to be when you have to adapt to a new environment everytime you go to work and reset up your workstation in the manner that works for the engineer?

I absolutely had lower productivity sharing a desk last time I was required to. The chair was always adjusted wrong. May as well just stay home. I'm not OCD but I've been seeing doctors for my back problems since I was 18 so frankly you're an ableist. Enjoy your health while you can.

I have my own desk at home and I'm not sharing!

I'm quite used to spending part of my paycheck on things like renting my own toilet, my own bathroom, kitchen with my own coffee maker and while it is used for a much larger part of the day my bedroom is only used < 1/3 of the day.

I have no idea why we are doing this!

> Would you pay to rent a car for 5 days if you were only going to drive it for 2 days? You wouldn't, because you care about your own money.

No man! People actually BUY cars so that they can keep them all to themselves!

It gets more absurd I assure you. The justification for most of them is to drive to work!

I think investors know we are doing this with their money?

This is such a stupid short-term saving for a long-term cost. It's frustrating to me how focused shareholders are on saving a quick buck via stock buy-backs, employee layoffs, leaving real estate agreements. It's a bunch of number misdirection to try and make it look like the company is earning more money when they're just losing a little bit less. https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/google-7billion-re... <- Google invested $7b in Real Estate 2 years ago. When the next economic boom happens they're going to hire as many people as they can and claim they don't have space for them. And the entire time they're fucking with employee morale because it's not a number they can put on a spreadsheet. But it will have a cost. They just won't see it until it's too late.

Read the comments on this post alone. It affects morale. Morale affect productivity, no germaphobia required.

I go even further - I OWN a car I don't drive every day. I don't even split it with my neighbor.

> Nobody but the most OCD germophobe is going to have lower productivity because they are sitting in a desk that someone else was in a day before.

maybe, at the end of the day, the cleaning crew does a deep clean of the surfaces etc..

What industry do you work in?

well the headline says that employees are being told they must share desks and the article says the same thing.

maybe the headline put a different picture in your mind than what the article said, but the headline seems ok to me.

if you wrote the headline for that article, what would it say?

Is there a new best place to go?