Google CEO Sundar Pichai has defended the company’s new desk-sharing policy for employees, stating that the offices are practically empty and emphasizing that real estate is pricey.
“There are people, by the way, who routinely complain that they come in and there are big swaths of empty desks, and it feels like it is a ghost town — it is just not a nice experience,” Pichai said. The policy, according to Pichai, is cost-efficient.
He cited that the employees come to the office only two days a week, which puts the current space to inefficient use.
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“We have expensive real estate. And if they are only utilised 30 per cent of the time, we have to be careful in how we think about it,” he said.
According to an earlier CNBC report, the new desk-sharing model will apply to Google Cloud’s five locations in the US, including Kirkland, Washington, San Francisco, Seattle, and Sunnyvale.
Meanwhile, the tech giant is warning employees that only a fewer of them will receive promotions to senior levels this year than in the past.
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Published on March 7, 2023
