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Google's Best Perk — Transport
Reverse Gear writes "The New York Times has an interesting article about how different kinds of fringe benefits are starting to count more in the fight for the best brains in Silicon Valley. The article mainly focuses on Google's high-tech shuttle-bus system, which is quite extensive, covering a majority of the San Fransisco Bay area. The article quotes a transportation expert opining that Google's may be the largest such private system anywhere. One-quarter of the headquarters employees are now using it. A Google software engineer said: 'They could either charge for the food or cut it altogether... If they cut the shuttle, it would be a disaster.'"
With the high costs and difficulty of real-estate, a Google Comune may be a good idea.
Table-ized A.I.
should be the geek mantra, and companies like Google know it.
How we know is more important than what we know.
As a listed company, what if Google is asked by shareholders to cut costs when the inevitable "down" periods start to kick in?
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
... there is real mass transit so that companies don't have to invest money in doing this for themselves. This leads me to ask a few rhetorical questions: How long before Google gets together with some of the other tech companies in the area to run a shared service? How long after that before it transforms into the sort of mass transit service that people elsewhere in the world take for granted?
Welcome to the consequences of high-density living.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
I'm sure lots of professionals feel the pain of a daily commute. Anything that improves it is a fairly major perk.
Obviously the next step is to found the Googleopolis... or perhaps just purchase an existing city outright...
Google is quite good with this in how environmentally friendly it is. However company(s) in Australia not that long ago would pay for taxis to and from work that would go directly to your house. They were just normal taxis that were free for you. I don't know how wide-spread this practice was, I imagine it wasn't too widespread, but I do know of at least one Australian company that did it. So while its good that Google does it nowadays (as I believe the company has since stopped), its a shame services like this are unusual rather then the norm.
Dear Employee,
You were late again today. You're fired. Report to HR immediately. Remeber, you are being watched.
Sincerely,
The Big Boss
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
So apparently, IT jobs in the United States can easily be outsourced to Bangalore, India, because the Internet makes it possible to do work remotely (across the world, across entire oceans) without skipping a beat.
But a bus needs to be run to transport workers 45 minutes away from work?
WTF?
Google will do what all companies do: Identify the largest portion of the employee population, usually those making less than $80k/year, and will initiate a program of attrition. Yearly raises will be slashed, performance reviews will be capped, and the incoming salary offers for non-priveleged candidates (ie. everyday technological associates) will be levelled off. Middle and lower managers will receive bonuses based upon how flat they can keep their budgets and not based upon any real technological performance--maybe a more preferred stock offering will be available to managers whose budgets increase by only justified amounts. In order to maintain a good image Google, as a corporate entity, will remind incoming candidates that "We may not be able to offer the same compensation as our competitors but we do offer transportation to and from work which we see as a valuable fringe benefit which both enhances the employee paycheck and works to preserve the environment."
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
In order to obtain your pass to ride the shared corporate transit system you will need to sign an NDA which amounts to "silence must be kept at all times". Video and audio recorders mounted within the bus will ensure that employees who have displeased their managers will be fired for saying "Bless you" when someone sneezes while employees who "give it up" to their management will be allowed to trade hot stock tips and infrastructure design improvements with their peers from other companies.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
I want to work for Google!
I'm guessing that part of the reason is due to taxes. That is, employees don't have to count the "value" of the bus service as income, so it's not taxed. So if the bus service costs $500/employee-year and their effective marginal tax rate is 35% (state, local, fed, SS), as long as the bus service is better than $325/year in additional pay, it's a good deal.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Here in Rochester, where Kodak is located, we have Kodak Park.
It's a huge area with it's own rail system.
Today with digital they have less a presence but it still does alot of stuff.
I don't know about the costs or perks of it though.
Why don't you guys have friends or journals?
Geeks never got the chance of enjoying a good school bus trip without beeing mocked or running after the bus(look at peter parker). Now they want to get that part of teenagehood they were denied. Google is also putting hot chicks that actually want to sit with a geek, and thats why it aint cheap! Hail google the shuttle overlord.
There's a free shuttle service in Emeryville, Ca (SFBay Area) that's funded by commercial property owners. Not only do the employees of the funders benefit but so does the surrounding community. Very nice!
With all the stuff Google have gotten into, porn is probably the next logical venture, the service could be called Google Oogle.
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
One word: Microsoft.
Hopefully this means what the author is suggesting: That in the future a shuttle service will become an essential part of the benefits package offered by large employers. Imagine if other major employers such as Microsoft, Boeing, AMD and others implemented such programs in areas with otherwise high traffic like Seattle, Austin, and of course the SF bay area? It would reduce stress for everyone, alleviate traffic, reduce the demand and price for gas, reduce air pollution (and as a result health care costs), and make people realize that mass transit is a viable option for North America.
We don't get French benefits?
Google is so perfect and environmentally sound. I mean, that one Party Jet probably uses more fuel than all the savings from the biodeisel busses.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
With a broadband connection you can work from home just as easily as from a cube. I've been doing that for years as an employee. As a moonlighting consultant I often work for people I have never seen in countries I have never been to.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
What do you do when wages and cost of food begin to approach each other? At what point is the foul acknowledged when wages = CoF - 1 ?
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
Is it only I who is reminded of the works of Gibson. Where corporations *own* you, your family, your dog and your kitchensink.
...doesn't it become a better idea to simply move Googleplex to a new location that isn't overcrowded, overpriced, etc.? Perhaps (in all seriousness) Google could move the headquarters to a more rural location. Employees could afford to live in mansions? Could drive to work without rush hour, etc. COMMS shouldn't be an issue...just run some fiber. Shoot, Google owns half the dark fiber (exaggerating of course) in the country anyway. Anyway, just thinking out loud.
As an interesting side note, the Michael Gaiman they quote is the son of author Neil Gaiman (The Sandman, Neverwhere, American Gods, etc.). I read the article and was surprised, because Neil mentioned his son choosing Google over Apple a month or two back on his blog. Sure enough, visited his blog after reading it and it is indeed him.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
I think you meant to say the people who create the groundbreaking ideas which the managers love to steal and present as their own. Innovators.
Prima donnas are described by m-w.com: "a vain or undisciplined person who finds it difficult to work under direction or as part of a team". Those would be the ones who, with proper political support, are promoted to upper management. Those who are not promoted to upper management are shuffled into sales jobs.
How does one tell the difference between an innovator and a prima donna? The innovators get fired when they ask for a raise. The prima donnas receive unemployment until they move to sales, HR, or PR.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
Naive much? Or just trolling? Don't be ashamed to admit it.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
Why not a whole town? They could even have a hammock district.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Amen to that. Alas, Americans think mass transit is evil.
Lots of SV companies sponsor shuttles, either jointly or on their own. Google's is the first one I've heard of that is so popular. The other shuttles are less ambitious; mostly they bridge the gap between the local train station and the workplace. Only a small percentage of the employees use them.
Why is Google's shuttle program so much more popular? Probably because they can afford to throw a lot of money at the problem. Providing decent transit in a sprawl is expensive. It takes a lot of vehicles to cover all those little neighborhoods. Google can afford it, but most other companies cannot.
And even a company that's rolling in dough is not likely to spend that kind of money on perks. If they did, they'd take heat from their shareholders for not "controlling costs". Google is exempt from that problem because because they've managed to lock out their Class B shareholders from any effective voice in the company.
You don't think the best perk might be say... the hundreds of thousands of dollars in stock options employees received pre-IPO? If you gave some employs the choice between these additional perks vs. the true cost in cash, I bet you'd find many people choosing the cash instead. Besides, my guess is some Google employees use these services disproportionately to others.
Any MSFT employee can ride Metro Transit buses for free. There's a "Flex Pass" thing that FTEs get every year from the receptionist. The buses are just regular buses, nothing fancy and in 6 years that I've spent at Microsoft I haven't used one once. Traffic isn't really that bad around there, and I lived 15 minutes away anyway.
I used to work for a company that had combination sick/vacation days. The downside was that when people were slightly to moderately sick, they still came to work, hoping not to lose a day of vacation. Their productivity wasnt great and they got other people sick. On the positive side, they usually ended up with 25 vacation days a year, which was great, esp if you can cash out some of it.
Am I the only person who doesn't want perks? I want three things from work: the ability to do my job, more pay, and less time there. If an employer wants to show their appreciation, they can increase my pay, let me work fewer hours, or both.
I expect an adequate computer, comfortable chair, comfortable desk, and a private cubicle/office. Those are things that help me focus on getting my job done. I don't consider them perks, I consider them mandatory for getting work done.
Besides that, I want to have as little to do with my employer as possible. I don't want a company car, I don't want a company shuttle, I don't want a company apartment, I don't want free food, I don't want free beverages. I want to work my 40-45 hours a week, then go home and forget about work completely.
Maybe not
There are people (I knw this is unbelievable to the average american) that can't drive a car, for example I can't. For that reason I avoided seeking a job in the USA. Well, looks like Google could be a potential employer.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
This has been the norm in Europe for large companies for many decades. They have their own buses that provide free transportation to their employees. Actually, they also have free food in many cases. I can think several car and household manufacturers that have been doing this for more than 50 years. But for some reason everything that google does seems to attract all the good press.
... there is real mass transit so that companies don't have to invest money in doing this for themselves. Right, so of course, the rest of the population should subsidise business transport instead? Public transport is useless for 85%-90% or so of journeys, it's a bad deal for the vast majority of the population.Deleted
Em dashes are NOT drop-in replacements for colons. You should be using a COLON, not an EM DASH, in the title. Please stop making this mistake. Thanks.
they don't have as high-tech a system as Google but they do provide transportation.
Samsung's research centers are mostly based in Suwon, which is about an hour south from Seoul.
so, they provide buses in the mornings for people coming to work and in the evenings
for those leaving for not just Seoul, but other places near Suwon as well..
i should also say that this practice is also common with the other big companies in
Korea (e.g. LG and Hyundai).
No one said it was the first, article simply talks about how popular this service in particular seems to be at Google (and how it may very well be the biggest service of its type anywhere, but no proof is offered).
:-)
Sheesh, someone is defensive
As someone else note, Google's owners own 100% of the company - I believe you meant "founders" or perhaps "directors."
No Inflation Taxation without Representation
There is problem...
Sorry.
I like music
This is the way shared transit should be: discriminatory.
:)
Part of the reason I hate public transit is the other people on the bus/train/plane with me: there are the ones who smell, the ones who talk to themselves, the ones who start ranting, the ones who panhandle, and the ones who won't fucking shut up and let me read.
If you discriminate on the basis of employment, you are likely to eliminate most of these bad behaviors, maybe with the exception of the ones who talk to themselves. Oh, and maybe smelling, depending on how many engineers there are on the bus.
In all seriousness, though, this makes the concept of shared transit palatable. I stopped taking the commuter rail after an incident in which a strung-out druggie was "escorted" off the train at the cost of over an hour. And you know what? Because it's public transit, that same person can get back on the train and cause problems the very next time she is freed from jail/rehab again.
Forget how you've been brainwashed. Discrimination on some criteria is good.
Finally, I should throw in a point about how this transit is entirely voluntary. There is no robbery (i.e., taxation) involved in paying for it. Google does it because they have determined that it is probably making them more profitable. If the experiment succeeds, other tech companies will probably start doing the same thing, perhaps even combining efforts. And it doesn't cost me a penny that I don't choose to spend. Contrast this with public transit in Boston, for instance, where the fare pays only 1/4 of the actual cost of the system, the rest being stolen from the taxpayers of Boston, Massachusetts, and the rest of the US (in decreasing degrees) at the point of a gun.
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This reminds me of a dream that I had one night soon after starting a job in a large company. . .
I dreamt that I was working for a company that had a beautiful campus high on a mountain overlooking this really beautiful city.
We each had a nice room, but we spent the vast majority of our time in the large and wonderfully appointed community rooms such as the dining room, the living rooms, the outside pool and tennis courts, and the very well appointed basement workshop.
We lived like a large family with the same people whom we worked with and it was very cozy and harmonious.
Then I started to feel very lonely. No one wanted to talk with me and they moved to the other side of the huge dining room table during the community dinner. The treated me like a leper.
In the workshop, my projects were being sabotaged and people started to get very mean to me and blaming me for lost tools and broken equipment.
Then I found myself alone in this large forlorn place on a gloomy day with no one else at all around except for the house staff, who were treating me as a tresspasser rather than a member of the community.
I remember walking out of the huge castle and turning around and finding the castle gone; nothing but a barren hilltop on a cold, nasty day.
A soggy newspaper lay on the broken sidewalk in front of me. One word.
Layoffs.
I awoke sweating and in tears. It took me a while to realize where I was.
Yes, I work for a large company.
But I also maintain a strong community that has nothing to do with work. If I lose my job. I only lose my job. I still have my community.
This dream has tought me to be very carefull and not let myself get to 'entrenched' with work. Sure, we have clubs and recreational facilities, but I have refrained from joining them. I keep my work and my social life separate.
When I got laid off from Boeing, this practice paid off very well. I only lost my job. I did not lose my 'mansion in the sky'.
Most respectfully years . . .
Cleara
Some people is tired of reading trivial and irrelevant news about every single thing that google does.
Google engineers have to bus to work because they can't afford housing close to their offices. (yes - I'm sure some choose to live in the city for the nightlife etc). For those that would love to walk to work that option is not on the table. Google doesn't pay their staff well enough to live close to their offices if they so choose. House prices in the valley contine to bloat. Living in communities where the housing is much less expensive is a reality for many Google and indeed other, high tech workers.
Rich people are eccentric. Poor people are strange. Me, I'd be happy with odd.
.... but not on the train. So it is Caltrain for me. Now if Caltrain could just enforce a "quiet car" to keep the cell phone yackers in their own ghetto, I would be home free.
who does not give a shit about how Google employees go to work, are fed or have their asses wiped for them. I thought this Slashdot was a tech blog, not Entertainment Tonight. All this Google gushing is getting tedious.
Maybe people just want to be reminded that some vestiges of March 2000 still exist?
Offtopic - my slashdot posting image confirmation word was "offshore" - should I be concerned?
If one bothers to check, Disney World, Rutgers University, Ohio State, several of the Six Flags and several industrial parks all have larger private transportation systems. What, was he guessing?
StoneCypher is Full of BS
I want to work my 40-45 hours a week, then go home and forget about work completely.
That attitude might be fine for a factory job where you push a button a couple hundred times a day and just make sure the machine you operate keeps doing its thing, but in the tech field employers want your brain. They want you to love working for them, to love what you do, to think about it as much as possible. Your boss wants to hear things like "when I was trying to go to sleep last night I had a great idea for the project" and they at least want to think they are giving you something more than just a paycheck so that you won't leave for some other slightly larger paycheck. They want you to like being there and to look forward to coming back. Even if you do an adequate job, if you are a clock puncher then you are first to go when times get tough.
- Disclaimer: Information in this post deemed reliable but not guaranteed.
That's freedom benefits, terrorist.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Amen to that. Alas, Americans think mass transit is evil.
Here's the thing with mass transit. I've lived in a variety of areas, from honestly rural (and I don't mean exurban, I mean rural), to highrise ferret cages, and most of the opposition to mass transit is in the suburbs or low-density urban areas.
The objection is pretty simple: if you bring mass transit into an area, it decreases the cost of living, because it no longer means you need to own a car. That means more people, particularly low-income people who might consume more services than they pay in (local) taxes, and thus it's a Bad Thing. There's also a lot of latent racism tied up in it, too, particularly if you have predominantly white suburbs lying outside urban areas with substantial non-white populations. But in my experience the racial influence is somewhat overstated; I'd say the single biggest factor that really scares suburbanites is that public transport will bring out young, low-income families who will overtax the public school systems (which as anyone who's lived in one of these places can attest to, are the centers of political and social power). Any proposal that might somehow negatively impact schools is a No-Go.
I've seen suburban and exurban 'bedroom communities' fight absolutely tooth and nail to keep out bus services, in particular. (Rail services seem to engender less opposition -- perhaps because you generally still need a car in order to get to the train station, so therefore it's less offensive.) Until you've seen one of these disputes in person, it's tough to appreciate the tenacity with which people will fight what seems at first glance to be a common-sense, win-win proposal. I've seen people pitch absolutely brilliant transportation schemes at local town council meetings, without realizing the minefield they were walking into, and that they were doomed from the beginning by factors essentially outside their control.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I keep hearing about all these "stops" in SF. But have never seen a map and can't find one when I use Google to search.....
While I understand the desire (and business need) to offer your employees perks and benefits in a competitive marketplace, Google could do a lot more for the world without hurting themselves at all by instead encouraging the development of self-funding and self-sustaining public transit. Every Google shuttle adds unnecessary pollution and congestion; its employees ought to be on Caltrain instead. If that's not meeting their needs, Google should be pressing for improvements, not building its own less efficient system instead. And let's not forget that the quest for cheap real estate that has so many companies on bay-adjacent fill instead of in city centers has made existing transit networks that much less efficient (and thus raised other costs for those same real-estate savers and clogged hwy 101 with their employees' cars). It's certainly better for everyone that Google offers buses instead of insisting that everyone drive a car, but the real answer is denser cities and superior public transit. Anything that delays achievement of those objectives by papering over the problem will only make the eventual adjustments that much more painful.
Just come to work at 10AM and leave after 7PM like I did. You'll experience much lighter traffic. Folks who complain about traffic are the ones who leave at 5PM. Certainly this doesn't compare to the gridlock they have in California.
Providing parallel services to the public sector - now that's interesting. I wonder if one day it will become the de facto public bus service? Like the ones you guys used to have until the big oil companies put pressure on them to get you all into individual autos?
free transport for employees is nothing new. india's IT companies like Infosys, Syntel, TCS, Wipro etc have been doing this for long time..
So you come in to work with a cold. You're not 100%. Maybe 90%.
You now infect twenty other people directly. Who then turn out to be no longer 100% but maybe 90%.
Your company now lost more than if they'd told you to stay at home until you're better.
The only thing your company should be doing is working out if someone is gaming the system and if it's worth the cost: it may be better to just fire them, give them severance pay and stick with that occasional loss than the smaller but continuous drain of policing illness (or letting the minority game the system without consequences).
If it's independent then they won't necessarily do what Google needs doing. By paying for their own transit, they get to run the busses when needed for work (staggered shifts) and leave them parked when not (night or midday).
In my country there is problem
And that problem is transport
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You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Googarcology?
Arcology As in the Niven/Pournelle novel Oath of Fealty.
Other companies and organizations are going this way -- putting more and more things onsite because of traffic problems. The Houston IKEA has daycare and a cafe. Churches are getting exercise facilities and cafeterias.
How about an IKEA Arcology? IKEAcology?
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Both of you reference medication presumptuously--as if to create a public image that is tarnished by a need for medication. What's your connection together? Are the two of you butt-banging homo friends?
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
Like other cities near the Great Lakes, Toronto's temperatures are affected substantially by the large body of water sitting nearby, which absorbs heat in the summertime and sheds it in the winter..
In this case, in the first part of the winter season (which includes Christmas) while the lake is still cooling, temperatures are warmer than they would otherwise be. The effect is quite noticeable, and tends to diminish rapidly with distance from the lakefront. If/when the temperature drops low enough and the water cools enough that ice forms on Lake Ontario, the moderating affect of the water is pretty much negated, at which point temperatures drop considerably.
-25C would be unusually cold for Toronto, but not at all farfetched during a cold snap in the latter half of the winter. I guess what I'm saying is: don't judge Great Lakes winters by Christmastime weather, as the lakes have a noticeable effect on warming and cooling and at that point in the season the lakes are still shedding heat.
That said, northern Manitoba wins the winter pissing contest (note: actual pissing not recommended outdoors in -55C weather.)
If they ever finish BART and actually circulled the bay area with high-speed rail service.
But considering the price of real estate now, I doubt that any of the super-rich
"I don't believe in giving a single cent to the common good" types that live in 50% of the bay area will go for it.
I mean, Richmond opposed letting BART run over the top of the Bay and now it's very difficult+expensive to drive there and back.
I got shit of the driving (even carpooling sucked) from SF to Cupertino and back each day. I maynot move back until there's a couple of funding bills for decent rail service in Bay Area.
Ben
I don't get it. Okay, so bus-wrapping is annoying, in that it blocks riders' views out the window, but I'm not quite sure how it counts as "social engineering."
There are certainly examples of situations where public-transport has been used as social engineering -- I know of a few places where public transportation was brought into select areas primarily as a way of getting low-wage employees to politically powerful businesses that didn't want to pay the prevailing wages in that area (which was high due to the requirement that everyone have a car). This isn't anything terribly new, though; it's your basic political-manipulation-for-profit-maximization that's gone on in various forms probably since the dawn of 'politics.'
Various forced-"diversification" via school-busing arrangements would also qualify, in my mind, as 'social engineering,' although school buses aren't 'public transport' as most people would define it.
Either way, I'm not sure I understand the advertising angle. Most places that I've heard of, which have tried bus- or train-wrap advertising, are doing it as an additional revenue generator, in order to supplement tax dollars and maintain mandated artificially-low ticket prices.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."