Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks during the Google I/O keynote session at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California on May 7, 2019.
Josh Edelson | AFP | Getty Images
Google’s mixed messaging when it comes to its return-to-office plans has been a subject of consternation across the company since the waning days of the pandemic. Now employees are finding further sources of frustration.
Last week Google updated its hybrid three-day-a-week office policy to include badge tracking, and noted that attendance will be included in performance reviews. Additionally, employees who already received approval for remote work may now have that status reevaluated.
Based on CNBC’s discussions with some employees and posts to an internal site called Memegen, Google faces growing concern among staffers that management is overreaching in its oversight of physical attendance and that they’re being treated like schoolchildren. There’s also increased uncertainty about what the future holds for people who moved to different cities and states after they were cleared to work from remote locations.
“If you cannot attend the office today, your parents should submit an absence request,” reads one top-rated meme posted by an employee and viewed by CNBC. Attached was a photoshopped image of human resources head Fiona Cicconi in front of a school chalkboard.
Another highly-rated meme said “check my work, not my badge.”
Ryan Lamont, a Google spokesperson, said in an email that the badge data collected is “aggregated” for company leaders.
“Now that we’ve fully transitioned to the hybrid work week, company leaders can see reports showing how their teams are adopting the hybrid work model,” the statement said, adding that Google doesn’t “share individual Googler badge data” in its reports.
An internal document indicates how group leaders will learn who hasn’t been in the office frequently enough.
“Managers of non-remote Googlers who have been consistently absent from the office will be cc’ed on emails to these Googlers (subject to local requirements), so they can support Googlers in either ramping back to the office or exploring other flexibility options,” the document says.
On Friday, YouTube held its own all-hands meeting with employees about the office policy update. At the event, executives presented the plans virtually, a paradox that didn’t go unnoticed.
Afterwards, a popular meme showed an image of “The Big Bang Theory” TV show character Leonard Hofstadter, saying “What are you looking at? You’ve never seen a hypocrite before?”
Discontent surrounding the RTO policies represents the latest challenge for Google as the company tries to get people back into its many expansive offices and campuses across the country. Prior to the pandemic, Google was known for its vibrant campus life, replete with massage parlors, yoga classes, video games and free gourmet meals.
But life changed, as did priorities, during the pandemic, when offices were closed and employees were forced to work from home. Staffers moved to different cities and got used to more flexibility and family time while taking advantage of Google’s flexible remote work options.
Ruth Porat, Alphabet CFO, at the WEF in Davos, Switzerland on May 23rd, 2022.
Adam Galica | CNBC
Tech companies flourished during that stretch. Google’s revenue growth surged and its stock price rose to record levels. Much of that was attributable to a wide array of cloud-based collaboration tools that could be used from anywhere.
“Thanks to amazing tools like Google Workspace, we can be highly productive from home — particularly when it comes to asynchronous work that requires deep focus,” Cicconi and Alphabet finance chief Ruth Porat wrote in a memo last week announcing updates to the hybrid policy.
In April of last year, Google began bringing most employees back to physical offices three days a week, following a number of fits and starts in its RTO plans that were complicated by regular spikes in Covid infection rates.
However, with attendance remaining sparse and Google looking to cut costs, the company started instituting changes this year that haven’t always been applauded. For example, CNBC reported in February that Google’s cloud unit told employees that it would transition to a desk-sharing workspace in its five largest locations as it downsized real estate.
Now, according to correspondence viewed by CNBC, the company is in the process of providing lockers in each location that uses the desk-sharing model so employees can store personal items overnight.
Chris Schmidt, a software engineer at Google and a member of the Alphabet Workers Union-CWA, questioned how the company can work so hard to get people back in the office when desk space is limited.
“New York City workers do not even have enough desks and conference rooms for workers to use comfortably,” Schmidt said in an email to CNBC.
Google is far from alone among its tech peers in struggling to find the right path forward with hybrid work. Last month, thousands of Amazon employees walked off the job, calling on the company to reconsider its three-day-a-week office mandate. Salesforce is reportedly offering to pay $10 a day to the local charity of choice for every employee that comes back to the office. And Meta said recently that employees will need to work from a physical office at least three days a week beginning in September.
Lamont said that Google’s three-day policy has been in place for over a year and is now being updated.
“It’s going well, and we want to see Googlers connecting and collaborating in-person, so we’re limiting remote work to exception only,” Lamont said.
Daniel Ek, founder and chief executive officer of Spotify, attends the Cannes Lions 2016 on June 22, 2016 in Cannes, France.
Antoine Antoniol | Getty Images
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek will step down from his position and move to the role of executive chairman, the company said Tuesday.
Spotify shares dipped around 4% following the announcement.
Ek, who co-founded the streaming platform in 2006, will be replaced by current co-presidents and longtime executives Gustav Söderström and Alex Norström as co-CEOs, the company said in a release. The transition will happen Jan. 1, 2026.
“Over the last few years, I’ve turned over a large part of the day-to-day management and strategic direction of Spotify to Alex and Gustav–who have shaped the company from our earliest days and are now more than ready to guide our next phase,” Ek said in a release. “This change simply matches titles to how we already operate.”
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Ek, who has been a member of the board since 2008, said his new role will focus on steering the company’s long-term strategy and providing support to its senior team.
“It’s been an honor of a lifetime for me to be able to lead Spotify for close to 20 years,” Ek said in an X post.
In 2023, Jamie Siminoff called up Amazon‘s former devices boss, Dave Limp, to say he was stepping down from leading the video doorbell company he sold to the e-commerce giant for $839 million in 2018.
Siminoff, who started Ring in 2013, said Limp and Amazon offered him the opportunity to work elsewhere at the company, but he declined.
“I said, ‘I think I have to leave,'” Siminoff recalled in an interview on Monday. “I don’t think I can be half in. I’m either all in or I’m all out.”
He wasn’t gone for long.
In April, Siminoff announced his return to Ring, replacing Liz Hamren, a former Microsoft and Discord executive whom Amazon had hired to succeed him. Now that he’s back at the helm, Siminoff says he’s restoring Ring’s original mission, to “make neighborhoods safer.”
And now his team has even more artificial intelligence technology at its disposal to supercharge those efforts.
Siminoff took the stage Tuesday at Amazon’s annual hardware event in New York to debut new Ring cameras, along with a feature called Search Party that uses AI to identify potential matches in camera footage. It’s aimed at “reuniting lost dogs” with their families, but Siminoff said there could be other applications in the future.
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During Hamren’s two-year tenure, Ring moved to adopt a softer, more whimsical image marked by silly videos of backyard animal encounters and family-friendly hijinks. It also removed a tool widely criticized by civil liberties and privacy advocates that let police request doorbell footage from users in its neighborhood watch app.
Siminoff, 48, said Ring’s cameras have many uses, including keeping an eye on pets and loved ones. Siminoff is based in Los Angeles and has two dogs, a Belgian Malinoisand a Chihuahua.
“I’m focused on: How can I get the highest density of camera coverage in a neighborhood matched with AI to make neighborhoods safer?” he said. “It’s not just hard crime.”
Ring is part of Amazon’s vast devices and services division, which is overseen by Panos Panay, a former Microsoft hardware leader who joined the company in 2023. Beyond Ring, the unit spans Amazon’s Zoox robotaxis, Kindle e-readers, Echo devices and Kuiper, the company’s internet satellite service.
Ring’s security cameras typically start at $50 and range in price depending on coverage. Users can also pay up to $20 a month for its subscription service that lets them continuously record and access more cloud storage, among other features.
‘It was terrible’
Siminoff said a personal encounter with violence played a part in his return.
Several months earlier, Siminoff said he witnessed a shooting at a laundromat in South Central Los Angeles that left him feeling shaken.
“It was terrible,” Siminoff said through tears. “Kids are crying, it’s a whole f****** scene.”
Ring CEO Jamie Siminoff unsuccessfully pitched his company on ABC’s “Shark Tank” in 2013 before returning to the show as a guest judge.
Eric McCandless | Contributor | Getty Images
The incident reaffirmed his belief in Ring’s mission and its potential to aid law enforcement officers when they “don’t have time to go door to door,” he said.
Those relationships with police have been controversial over the years.
Amazon claimed a Los Angeles Police Department pilot program in 2015 found that Ring’s doorbells reduced burglaries in neighborhoods “by as much as 55%,” according to a 2018 release. But reportsfrom severaloutlets have disputed whether Ring cameras lead to a decrease in crime.
Privacy advocates have expressed concern that the company’s cameras and accompanying Neighbors app have heightened the risk of racial profiling and turned residents into informants, with few guardrails around how law enforcement can use the material.
Siminoff, who said he’s “pro public safety” and “backs the blue,” said he felt some of the coverage of Ring’s video-request feature for police was unfair or inaccurate.
“That’s the stuff that irks me,” Siminoff said, referring to the claim that Ring gives camera access to police.
“We allow them to request footage from people in a super privacy centric, anonymous way that keeps their privacy. But that’s not a good headline,” he added.
Devin Hance | CNBC
A few weeks after Siminoff’s return, Ring reintroduced its community request tool through a partnership with Axon Enterprise, the maker of Tasers and police body cameras. Police can solicit footage from Ring cameras through Axon’s online evidence management system, and users can choose whether or not to share it.
“I don’t think we should be working directly with police,” Siminoff said. “It’s not the business we’re in in any way.”
Siminoff said Ring, which is profitable, is exploring other potential growth areas, such as security solutions for small- and medium-sized businesses.
Ring isn’t currently exploring offering up its tech to a more homegrown customer — its sprawling parent company. At least when it comes to sticking its cameras in Amazon delivery vans or warehouses.
Siminoff has considered it, but “then you realize it’s just a distraction,” he said. “Amazon’s so big you could probably do something for everything.”
A model of the Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost lander during the company’s initial public offering at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, US, on Thursday, Aug. 7, 2025.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Firefly Aerospace shares sank more than 24% after its rocket exploded during a test flight on Monday.
The explosion occurred during a first-stage test flight of satellite-launching Alpha Flight 7 rocket at its facility in Briggs, Texas, Firefly wrote in an update.
“Proper safety protocols were followed, and all personnel are safe,” Firefly wrote. “The company is assessing the impact to its stage test stand, and no other facilities were impacted.”
The eight-year-old space technology company competes in an increasingly crowded space dominated by billionaire-backed ventures such as Elon Musk‘s SpaceX for deals with NASA and prominent government contractors.
At the time of its initial public offering last month, Firefly was the third significant space technology to debut in 2025 after Voyager Technologies and Karman Holdings.
High investor interest led to an upsized offering, with an initial share sale raising $868 million at a $6.3 billion valuation. Shares surged 34% on opening day to close at more than $60. The stock has since pulled back 50%.
“It’s all about execution,” CEO Jason Kim told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on IPO day.
He said the company is laser-focused on its Alpha rockets to meet heightened commercial and national security demands.
Firefly makes rockets, space tugs and lunar landers. Earlier this year, its Blue Ghost lunar lander successfully landed on the moon.
Rocket tests in the sector, historically, haven’t always been a smooth ride. Firefly’s sixth Alpha rocket failed in April. Last month, the Federal Aviation Administration cleared Firefly to continue testing its Alpha rockets. SpaceX has also suffered mishaps, including a launch pad explosion this summer.
“We learn from each test to improve our designs and build a more reliable system,” Firefly wrote in its mission update.