In the Midst of Office Downsizing, Google Asks Some Employees to Share Desks

As part of a "real estate efficiency" initiative, Google will start asking cloud employees and partners to share desk space and alternate days next quarter.

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In an internal FAQ shared with cloud employees and viewed by Trade Algo, it was revealed that the new desk-sharing model is being implemented at Google Cloud’s five biggest U.S. locations — Kirkland, Washington; New York City; San Francisco; Seattle; and Sunnyvale, California — so the company “can continue to invest in Cloud’s growth” in the future. According to the document, some buildings will be vacated due to the changes. 

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The internal document stated that most Googlers will now share a desk with one other Googler as of now and that they expect employees to come in on alternate days so they're not at the same desk on the same day. “As part of the matching process, they will decide on a basic setup for their desks and establish norms to ensure a positive experience with their desk partners and their teams in the new shared workspace.”

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The FAQ states that employees may come in on other days, but if they’re in on an unassigned day, they will use “overflow drop-in space.”

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Leadership within the company has given the new seating arrangement a name that it refers to as "Cloud Office Evolution" or "CLOE", which the company describes as "combining the best of pre-pandemic collaboration with the flexibility" of hybrid work arrangements. There is no temporary pilot program associated with the new workspace plan, according to the document. Ultimately, this will result in more efficient use of our space, as a result of changes.

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As Google also stated in its FAQ, it used the internal data it had on its employee office return patterns as a means of making the decision. Besides slowing office return patterns, the company has also slowed hiring and laid off 11,000 employees in January, in addition to slowing office return patterns. 

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Memes began popping up on the company's Memegen platform, mocking the new desk arrangement and the "corpspeak" leadership used to tout it as a cost-saving move.

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"Not all cost-cutting measures should be worded in a way that makes them sound good for employees," a popular meme read. It would be helpful for leadership to have a simple statement such as 'We are cutting the office space to reduce costs in order to reduce costs'.

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“We have run pilots and conducted surveys with Cloud employees since returning to the office to explore different hybrid work models and to shape the best experience for them,” according to a Google spokesperson. “We have found that Cloud Googlers value in-person collaboration when they are in the office, as well as being able to work from home a few days a week if they wish. As a result of this feedback, we have developed our new rotational model, which combines the best of pre-pandemic collaboration with the flexibility and focuses that we have all come to appreciate from remote work, while also improving the efficiency of our workspace."

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As part of Google's ongoing effort to cut costs, the company has decided to downsize its real estate footprint as well. However, the company has not yet specified which regions or buildings it plans to downsize at this time.

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Google executives said in a call on the company's fourth-quarter earnings that it expects to incur costs of about $500 million in the current quarter due to a reduction in global office space, but warned that other real estate charges might be incurred going forward as well. The San Francisco Bay Area's SFGate reported earlier in the month that the company would be terminating leases for a number of empty spaces in the region, which is where its headquarters are located, as of this month.  

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As one of the most rapidly growing areas at the company, the cloud unit accounts for more than a quarter of its full-time workforce, but it isn't profitable.

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There were $7.32 billion in revenues generated by Google Cloud in the fourth quarter of 2012, up 32% from the prior year, which is a lot faster than the company's overall growth of less than 10%. Even so, that revenue figure was less than the Wall Street consensus expected, and the Cloud unit is still losing hundreds of millions of dollars every quarter - $480 million in the fourth quarter. However, that was nearly half the loss seen a year earlier.

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However, in total, Google generated a total of $13.62 billion in net income during the first quarter of 2022 and $59.97 billion for the entire year. There was a significant drop in both of these from 2021 to 2022.

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Welcome to the ‘neighborhood’

As part of the new arrangement, 200 to 300 teams of "and partners" will be organized into "neighborhoods," which may also include "partner teams within other organizations, such as Finance and People Operations," according to the new arrangement. The neighborhood will have its own vice president or director, who will be responsible for allocating the space within the neighborhood. 

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The employees are generally expected to alternate between Mondays and Wednesdays, or Tuesdays and Thursdays, as far as when they are in the office. Their work hours will be reduced to two days a week, a change from the three days a week that they were previously required to work by the company.

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“Neighborhood leaders should establish norms around sharing desks, ensuring pairings of Googlers have discussions about the ways in which they intend to decorate the space, store personal items, and tidiness expectations.”

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Additionally, employees with computer workstations will no longer be able to locate their workstations directly under their desks, but rather will have to look up the location of their workstations in a database or submit a troubleshooting ticket in order to determine their location. As time goes on, it is expected that employees will transition to the CloudTop platform, which is a virtual desktop tool that is currently reserved only for Google employees.

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It is also stated in the FAQ that there will be a limit on the number of rooms that will be used for meetings, noting that conference rooms are "already difficult to book." Employees will be discouraged from "camping" in conference rooms, it stated.

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Employees will receive notifications if someone in their area tests positive and reports it to Google for Covid-19. Desks will be sanitized daily.