Google asks some employees to share desks amid office downsizing
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai gestures during a session at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos.
Fabrice Coffrini | AFP | Getty Images
Google is asking cloud employees and partners to share their desks and alternate days with their desk mates starting next quarter, citing “real estate efficiency,” CNBC has learned.
The new desk-sharing model will apply to Google Cloud’s five largest U.S. locations — Kirkland, Washington; New York City; San Francisco; Seattle; and Sunnyvale, California — and is happening so the company “can continue to invest in Cloud’s growth,” according to an internal FAQ recently shared with cloud employees and viewed by CNBC. Some buildings will be vacated as a result, the document noted.
“Most Googlers will now share a desk with one other Googler,” the internal document stated, noting they expect employees to come in on alternate days so they’re not at the same desk on the same day. “Through the matching process, they will agree on a basic desk setup and establish norms with their desk partner and teams to ensure a positive experience in the new shared environment.”
The FAQ says employees may come in on other days, but if they’re in on an unassigned day, they will use “overflow drop-in space.”
Internally, leadership has given the new seating arrangement a title: “Cloud Office Evolution” or “CLOE,” which it describes as “combining the best of pre-pandemic collaboration with the flexibility” of hybrid work. The new workspace plan is not a temporary pilot, the document noted. “This will ultimately lead to more efficient use of our space,” it said.
Google also used its internal data it has on it its employee office return patterns to inform the decision, the FAQ stated. In addition to slower office return patterns, the company has slowed hiring and laid off 11,000 employees in January.
Memes started showing up in the company platform Memegen, poking fun at the change — specifically targeting the “corpspeak” used by leadership to tout the new desk arrangement in what they viewed to be a cost-cutting measure.
“Not every cost-cutting measure needs to be word mangled into sounding good for employees,” one popular meme read. “A simple ‘We are cutting office space to reduce costs’ would make leadership sound more believable.”
A Google spokesperson explained, “Since returning to the office, we’ve run pilots and conducted surveys with Cloud employees to explore different hybrid work models and help shape the best experience. Our data show Cloud Googlers value guaranteed in-person collaboration when they are in the office, as well as the option to work from home a few days each week. With this feedback, we’ve developed our new rotational model, combining the best of pre-pandemic collaboration with the flexibility and focus we’ve all come to appreciate from remote work, while also allowing us to use our spaces more efficiently.”
The move comes as Google downsizes its real estate footprint amid broader cost-cutting. However, it hasn’t yet specified regions or buildings it plans on downsizing.
In its fourth-quarter earnings call, Google executives said it expects to incur costs of about $500 million related to reduced global office space in the current quarter, and warned that other real estate charges are possible going forward. Earlier this month, SFGate reported the company will be ending leases for “a number of unoccupied spaces” in the San Francisco Bay Area, the region where its headquarters are located.
The cloud unit, which makes up more than a quarter of Google’s full-time workforce, is among the highest-growth areas at the company, but is not profitable.
In the fourth quarter, Google Cloud brought in $7.32 billion, growing 32% from the prior year, considerably faster than the company’s overall growth rate of less than 10%. But that revenue figure was less than Wall Street consensus expected, and the Cloud unit is still losing hundreds of millions of dollars every quarter — $480 million in the fourth quarter, although that was nearly half of the loss a year prior.
Overall, however, Google earned $13.62 billion in net income during the quarter, and $59.97 billion for all of 2022. Both were significant drops from 2021.
Welcome to the ‘neighborhood’
Under the new arrangement, teams of 200 to 300 employees “and partners” will be organized into “neighborhoods” that may also include “partner teams that are a part of other organizations, such as Finance, People Operations, etc.,” the FAQ read. Each neighborhood will have a vice president or director who will be responsible for allocating space in the neighborhood.
Employees will generally alternate days they’re in the office, either Monday and Wednesday, or Tuesday and Thursday. They will be in two days a week, a change from the company requiring employees to come in three days a week.
“Neighborhood leads are encouraged to set norms with their teams around sharing desks, ensuring that pairings of Googlers have conversations about how they will or will not decorate the space, store personal items, and tidiness expectations.”
In addition, the FAQ said that employees with computer workstations will no longer have those workstations located directly under their desks, but instead will have to look up its location in a database or put in a ticket for troubleshooting. Over time, employees are expected to transition to CloudTop, a virtual desktop tool that’s so far reserved only for Google employees.
The FAQ said it will also be putting a cap on number of rooms to be taken for meetings, noting conference rooms are “already difficult to book.” Employees will be discouraged from “camping” in a conference room, it added.
As for Covid-19, desks will be sanitized daily and employees will get a notification if someone in their area tests positive and reports it to Google.
Technology
Nvidia positioned to weather Trump tariffs, chip demand ‘off the charts,’ says Altimeter’s Gerstner
Altimeter Capital CEO Brad Gerstner said Thursday that he’s moving out of the “bomb shelter” with Nvidia and into a position of safety, expecting that the chipmaker is positioned to withstand President Donald Trump’s widespread tariffs.
“The growth and the demand for GPUs is off the charts,” he told CNBC’s “Fast Money Halftime Report,” referring to Nvidia’s graphics processing units that are powering the artificial intelligence boom. He said investors just need to listen to commentary from OpenAI, Google and Elon Musk.
President Trump announced an expansive and aggressive “reciprocal tariff” policy in a ceremony at the White House on Wednesday. The plan established a 10% baseline tariff, though many countries like China, Vietnam and Taiwan are subject to steeper rates. The announcement sent stocks tumbling on Thursday, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq down more than 5%, headed for its worst day since 2022.
The big reason Nvidia may be better positioned to withstand Trump’s tariff hikes is because semiconductors are on the list of exceptions, which Gerstner called a “wise exception” due to the importance of AI.
Nvidia’s business has exploded since the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022, and annual revenue has more than doubled in each of the past two fiscal years. After a massive rally, Nvidia’s stock price has dropped by more than 20% this year and was down almost 7% on Thursday.
Gerstner is concerned about the potential of a recession due to the tariffs, but is relatively bullish on Nvidia, and said the “negative impact from tariffs will be much less than in other areas.”
He said it’s key for the U.S. to stay competitive in AI. And while the company’s chips are designed domestically, they’re manufactured in Taiwan “because they can’t be fabricated in the U.S.” Higher tariffs would punish companies like Meta and Microsoft, he said.
“We’re in a global race in AI,” Gerstner said. “We can’t hamper our ability to win that race.”
Jaque Silva | Nurphoto | Getty Images
YouTube on Thursday announced new video creation tools for Shorts, its short-form video feed that competes against TikTok.
The features come at a time when TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, is at risk of an effective ban in the U.S. if it’s not sold to an American owner by April 5.
Among the new tools is an updated video editor that allows creators to make precise adjustments and edits, a feature that automatically syncs video cuts to the beat of a song and AI stickers.
The creator tools will become available later this spring, said YouTube, which is owned by Google.
Along with the new features, YouTube last week said it was changing the way view counts are tabulated on Shorts. Under the new guidelines, Shorts views will count the number of times the video is played or replayed with no minimum watch time requirement.
Previously, views were only counted if a video was played for a certain number of seconds. This new tabulation method is similar to how views are counted on TikTok and Meta’s Reels, and will likely inflate view counts.
“We got this feedback from creators that this is what they wanted. It’s a way for them to better understand when their Shorts have been seen,” YouTube Chief Product Officer Johanna Voolich said in a YouTube video. “It’s useful for creators who post across multiple platforms.”
WATCH: TikTok is a digital Trojan horse, says Hayman Capital’s Kyle Bass
CEO of Meta and Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sanchez, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk attend the inauguration ceremony before Donald Trump is sworn in as the 47th U.S. president in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, Jan. 20, 2025.
Saul Loeb | Via Reuters
Technology stocks plummeted Thursday after President Donald Trump’s new tariff policies sparked widespread market panic.
Apple led the declines among the so-called “Magnificent Seven” group, dropping nearly 9%. The iPhone maker makes its devices in China and other Asian countries. The stock is on pace for its steepest drop since 2020.
Other megacaps also felt the pressure. Meta Platforms and Amazon fell more than 7% each, while Nvidia and Tesla slumped more than 5%. Nvidia builds its new chips in Taiwan and relies on Mexico for assembling its artificial intelligence systems. Microsoft and Alphabet both fell about 2%.
Semiconductor stocks also felt the pain, with Marvell Technology, Arm Holdings and Micron Technology falling more than 8% each. Broadcom and Lam Research dropped 6%, while Advanced Micro Devices declined more than 4% Software stocks ServiceNow and Fortinet fell more than 5% each.
The drop in technology stocks came amid a broader market selloff spurred by fears of a global trade war after Trump unveiled a blanket 10% tariff on all imported goods and a range of higher duties targeting specific countries after the bell Wednesday. He said the new tariffs would be a “declaration of economic independence” for the U.S.
Companies and countries worldwide have already begun responding to the wide-sweeping policy, which included a 34% tariff on China stacked on a previous 20% tax, a 46% duty on Vietnam and a 20% levy on imports from the European Union.
China’s Ministry of Commerce urged the U.S. to “immediately cancel” the unilateral tariff measures and said it would take “resolute counter-measures.”
The tariffs come on the heels of a rough quarter for the tech-heavy Nasdaq and the worst period for the index since 2022. Stocks across the board have come under pressure over concerns of a weakening U.S. economy. The Nasdaq Composite dropped nearly 5% on Thursday, bringing its year-to-date loss to 13%.
Trump applauded some megacap technology companies for investing money into the U.S. during his speech, calling attention to Apple’s plan to spend $500 billion over the next four years.
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