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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.'"
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 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
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.
This isn't necessarily such a bad idea. In Irvine, the big tech center of Southern California, the Irvine Company is building luxury apartment complexes adjacent to new office space. The best part is that it's also across the street from a large retail / entertainment center. So people literally live where they can work and play. I don't see anything wrong with this idea. At least for people who chose apartment living.
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?
Cutting-edge work generally needs close-knit collaboration and understanding of local culture. The stuff easiest to offshore are things that are fairly easy to define clearly up-front. I suspect that some of Google's maintenance work will eventually go there when they face a budget crunch in the future (and cut back on R&D).
Table-ized A.I.
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
Horse shit. It shouldn't be anybody's mantra. To put it quite simply, I work to live. I don't live to work. Living to work just ain't healthy, hence the reason stuff like showers combined with cots and other "live in" amenities at work are frankly a bad idea.
Go spend some time in the light of the daystar if you believe otherwise. You probably need it.
Go do a PhD, then you'll know what I'm talking about, and you'll know what being a Google hotshot is all about.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Yes, that would be great for working. However, a large part of the allure of working somewhere like Silicon Valley is the non-work components of the area. Actual culture somewhere nearby, other businesses that you like to shop at (or go work at if your job sucks), and so on. Plus Google has a steady stream of employees they can steal from other nearby businesses, and they're near businesses that they want to work with.
This is one reason why Gateway is not located in North Dakota anymore. This is why technology companies in particular all seem to clump together in a few locations. The companies themselves find value in it, and their employees (being generally well-educated and to a degree able to be more selective than some other industries) want to live in places that they actually like rather than, lets say, North Dakota.
The genesis of the Google Shuttle was in a group of progressive-thinking employees living in the city of San Francisco who disliked the social costs and the personal frustration of driving vehicles all the way to Mountain View every day, but found the existing mass transit options inconvenient considering the nature and hours of their work.
The program was later extended to other Bay Area communities. It is a way of coping with the downsides of commuting to work through metropolitan congestion, while still being able to maintain the benefits of living in vibrant, densely populated and creative city like San Francisco. Moving the company to a rural area would mean losing access to those creative people, which would be bad for the Google culture.
Shuttle Rider.
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
It would really suck though, if you were to get laid off....now you're out of a job and a home.
Download free e-books, lectures, and tutorials at bookgoldmine.com
Wait. Let me get this straight.
These people are getting the opportunity to do exactly what they love and what they've always dreamed of, quite literally for the rest of their living days if they so choose, and you think that *they're* the suckers here?
I... uh... don't get it, but okay. Whatever you say, chief.
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
Public transport is useless for 85%-90% or so of journeys, it's a bad deal for the vast majority of the population.
And you base this on what, exactly ? Your utter ignorance of any remotely well-implemented public transport systems ?
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.
New York City will disagree with you. As will most of Europe probably. Much of the US may not but then again they have shit for public transportation, even the Bay Area which has a decent system by US standards is barely usable for a lot of trips.
Google hotshot... whoop-dee-fuckin-doo. Live in the Mission long enough and you're bound to come across a Google hotshot. I have. They work long hours, they don't read very many books, and after they've gotten past the obligatory "I work for Google," they have very little interesting to say. A job is a job is a job, something no amount of Lego cubicles and free sushi can change. At the end of the day you're still slaving away for The Man, whoever he may be. Doing something that neither makes the world a better nor a worse place, but simply makes money for someone else. Spending 50% of your adult life toiling at something that no one will care about in 30 years, let alone 300. Half-time, half measures, half fulfilling.
8,000 sounds like a bit much, but I don't run a billion dollar company so maybe it's the right amount...
:3 rawr.