Never pay your employer to do your job, are we in another great depression?
this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
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This hotel has been there for a while for visiting employees, paid for by the company. People wanted this option if, for example, you lived in Brazil, wanted to visit the US, but didn't have any reason to book a business trip because you don't work with anyone at headquarters. I'm going to guess that most paying guests won't be reporting for work during their stays, but will be grabbing a solid 3 meals a day, plus snacks.
In other news, Google opens the cheapest hotel in California
You can check out any time you like but you can never leave.
No way. I don't want my employer to also be my landlord. Nothing good could come of that.
You commit 16 lines, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store
Some people say a man is made outta blood. A code monkey's made out of Fritos and crud. Fritos and crud and skin and bone. A back that's weak and a mind that's strong...
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Sounds illegal until I realized its tech workers who refuse to unionize and think they are getting paid bank but to live like a virtual slave.
As one in the industry, it's incredibly frustrating. Colleagues have been saying "oh, we get all of these perks and get nice salaries, we don't need a union" while others are bucket-crabbing with "you make big money, why do you need a union?", both overlooking the immense amounts of unpaid overtime that are endemic. Then, there's the push for RTO, which does nothing to benefit employees and would be readily prevented by strong unions.
it's very easy to ignore social inequities if you spend all your time working for a shitty company making absolute bank
think they are getting paid bank
Objectively, they are.
Henry Ford did that.
A lot of companies used to run company towns. Toyota still does, as far as I know. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a return of that sort of thing with real estate prices getting absurd and companies wanting to drive people back into the office.
No no you don't understand. It's work from home but work IS the home! You see it makes perfect sense.
Hah, I actually did that when I first started working for a small company.
The co-founder also rented out a house he owned as a duplex.
Actually wasn't that bad, he charged slightly below market rate, and was pretty attentive. But definitely felt weird and I was happy to move out after a few years. It's just an unnecessary source of potential drama.
Now my manager lives there, and has for five years.
The good that comes from that, from the perspective of the boss-landlord is that if your employee-tenants start getting the idea to strike, you control both their income and their shelter, so they reconsider.
Then you offer on-site housing to your scabs.
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Next up will be these tech companies offering company script to buy things at the company store while paying that rent to the company room. You know, to help transition into the new indentured working environment.
You load 16 tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt.
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All these comments comparing this to company scrip are profoundly ignorant, and are downright insulting to the victims of robber barons and capitalism in Appalachia. Google pays salaries in USD. They don't pay a worker 10 GoogleBucks per ton. Google doesn't force their workers to live at Google tenements or stay at Google hotels. Hell, they don't even force you to go into a Google office. All they'll do is make a note on your "permanent record" at performance review time if you were in the office less than 60% of the time. In coal country, if you showed up at a picket line instead of the mine, they'd send in Pinkerton goons to murder you, and the mayor too.
Call me a bootlicker, I don't care, but I actually think this is brilliant on Google's part. Median rent in Mountain View for a 1br is $3600/mo. They're renting rooms to their high-paid employees for ~15% less than market rent, right on campus, avoiding them from pricing out another local family if all they need is a place to sleep. Sillycon Valley is a terrible place to live. It's a place to go for a couple years, make a bunch of money, live worse than a broke student, and GTFO as soon as possible. It's like working on an offshore oil rig, with the gender ratio to match...
Unlike the coal towns' usurious pricing to a captive market (another day older and deeper in debt), Google is almost certainly losing money on this hotel. They don't care. They shell out twice as much for a temporary apartment with every corporate relocation package they give to new hires.
Google would like to build more market rate housing to meet demand. Unfortunately, building any new housing is illegal because the real estate cartel runs City Council, so Google takes over an existing hotel and prices it like an apartment. It's the reverse Airbnb. You love to see it. It's not a silver bullet. There are no silver bullets when the cartel cornered the local housing market 15 years ago, but every little bit to undermine their stranglehold on power helps. FDR and Stalin were natural enemies, and yet they both recognized in that moment, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Same goes here. Critical support for Google.
While I get your point, here's the other issue with how this is framed.
The advertisement entices workers to make the jump, even for a short while, to its on-campus hotel, saying: “Just imagine no commute to the office in the morning and instead, you could have an extra hour of sleep and less friction,” CNBC reported. “Next, you could walk out of your room and quickly grab a delicious breakfast or get a workout in before work starts.” It adds that after the end of the work day, “you could enjoy a quiet evening on top of the rooftop deck or take in one of the fun local activities.”
I can imagine that, at least except for the rooftop deck. Working from home. Without having to pay $99/night.
They could avoid this whole thing by simply just not forcing people to go back to the office.
how is this shit upvoted? cool they're not as bad as they could be. doesn't make it a good idea.
they're gonna go the classic corporate route of attracting people to a new system with nice benefits and relatively reasonable prices, only to enshittify it once people are attached to it
I'm ... I just ... is this satire ?
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The advertisement entices workers to make the jump, even for a short while, to its on-campus hotel, saying: “Just imagine no commute to the office in the morning and instead, you could have an extra hour of sleep and less friction,” CNBC reported.
Did these stupid motherfuckers read their own ad??
No commute and extra sleep? That sounds great!
No wonder everyone is trying to WFH - the very same reasons you just listed.
LMFAO the only ones really pushing it are the ones invested in real estate
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Sillicon Valley reinvents Company Scrip.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip#Lumber_company_scrip
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I remember my internship at google 10y ago, with all the free perks, service to make you forget about chores, the cool attitude, etc...
That's a far cry from now :/
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Saint Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store
Meanwhile, at my government job, we are paying people to live in our government supplied houses because we need people on sight.
we need people on sight
Gotta keep them in the crosshairs!
Govt is a completely different beast with a different set of rules as opposed to corps however
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$99 a night for company rooms? Around here we can get a shitty room, AND a hooker for that price. Not to mention drugs being readily available in the parking lot.
Not enough drugs in the world could make me interested in that hooker.
I'm guessing there's no shortage of drugs on the Google campus.
It may be cheaper than a hotel or apartment, but why should an employee have to pay to go to work when they could be working remotely?
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Jokes on them if they think I would be “to proud” to just sleep in a conference room, at my desk, etc if the only other option is actually paying them for the privilege of staying there.
I wonder what the rules are, like what would happen if you rent a room and just had a booze fueled rager several nights a week, leaving the room trashed.
Or sublet it out to a third party for more than $100/night as a side hustle.
Gtfo I thought I let my job take advantage of me
isnt this the opposite direction prospective employees would be going? who the hell is looking to live at their job?
This is unfortunately really common in East-Asia. Samsung employees live in Samsung apartments, ride the Samsung metro to work, pay for things with their Samsung wallet, while they listen to Samsung controlled news. Google would love to become the Samsung of the West.
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15 million merits, coming soon!
Google employees are not brain dead. They made google to what it is today
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We've gone from "work from home" back to "live from work" at an astounding pace. That's... good? No, wait, the opposite. Fuck this society and the parasitic husks who direct it in this manner.
I owe my soul to the company store...
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