Google is offering an on-campus hotel ‘special’ to help lure workers back to the office
Google CEO Sundar Pichai
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Google is hoping to lure workers back to the office with a new on-site hotel special, but some workers aren’t convinced it’s a good deal.
The company said full-time employees can book a room at an on-campus hotel in Mountain View for $99 a night in what it’s deeming a “Summer Special,” according to materials viewed by CNBC. The description states that the special will run through Sept. 30 in hopes it’ll “make it easier for Googlers to transition to the hybrid workplace.”
Since the promotion is for unapproved business travel, the company will not reimburse their stays, but will require employees to use their personal credit cards, the special’s description states.
“Just imagine no commute to the office in the morning and instead, you could have an extra hour of sleep and less friction,” the description reads. “Next, you could walk out of your room and quickly grab a delicious breakfast or get a workout in before work starts.”
The ad goes on to say that after the work day ends, “you could enjoy a quiet evening on top of the rooftop deck or take in one of the fun local activities.”
The Google-owned hotel is situated on a newer campus in Mountain View, California, that it opened last year. The 42-acre campus is adjacent to NASA’s Ames Research Center and has capacity to house 4,000 employees working on its ads products, the company said upon its opening.
The San Francisco Bay Area has some of the highest real estate costs due in part to limited housing supply from decades-old zoning restrictions and elevated demand, most of which comes from high-paying tech workers and executives working in the surrounding tech industry. The city of Mountain View is especially short on housing and contains large swaths of corporate offices — many of which are owned or leased by Google.
A Google spokesperson noted that the company regularly runs specials for employees to take advantage of the company’s spaces and amenities.
‘Where I live is much better’
Some employees have commented on the hotel deal in internal discussion forums.
One highly rated meme showed movie clips that included a scene in the movie “Mean Girls,” where the main character played by Lindsey Lohan says “No, thank you.”
“Now I can give some of my pay back to Google,” another highly rated meme read.
Another meme joked that living on campus for the summer could disrupt “work-life balance.”
At $99 a night, the hotel would amount to roughly $3,000 a month, employees pointed out in internal discussions viewed by CNBC.
One employee pointed out that hotel amenities were not to be ignored. “I pay more and get a lot less in total for my apartment,” wrote one employee in a discussion thread. “Though admittedly where I live is much better.”
Another thought it was still too expensive. “If it was around $60 a night, that could be a fine-ish alternative to apartments, but $99? No thanks.”
“I would’ve totally done it, had it fit a certain profile: $3k rent all-in, fully-furnished, unlimited meals, paid utilities, plus housekeeping/cleaning every day,” another employee wrote.
Another hypothesized the move could be a way to reduce vacancy at the hotel after Google cut corporate travel budgets.
Google began bringing most employees back to physical offices three days a week last year, following several changes in its return-to-office plans that were complicated by spikes in Covid infection rates. However, attendance had been sparse in the months that followed mandatory RTO as workers pushed back, citing high housing costs near offices and higher productivity while working remotely, which corresponded with record profits for the company.
In June, the company became stricter, announcing new enforcements that included using office attendance in performance reviews and tracking badge data. The company’s HR chief even asked already approved remote workers to reconsider their status and rejoin their colleagues in office.
Technology
Amazon CEO Jassy says AI will lead to ‘fewer people doing some of the jobs’ that get automated
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the rapid rollout of generative artificial intelligence means the company will one day require fewer employees to do some of the work that computers can handle.
“Like with every technical transformation, there will be fewer people doing some of the jobs that the technology actually starts to automate,” Jassy told CNBC’s Jim Cramer in an interview on Monday. “But there’s going to be other jobs.”
Even as AI eliminates the need for some roles, Amazon will continue to hire more employees in AI, robotics and elsewhere, Jassy said.
Earlier this month, Jassy admitted that he expects the company’s workforce to decline in the next few years as Amazon embraces generative AI and AI-powered software agents. He told staffers in a memo that it will be “hard to know exactly where this nets out over time” but that the corporate workforce will shrink as Amazon wrings more efficiencies out of the technology.
It’s a message that’s making its way across the tech sector. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff last week claimed AI is doing 30% to 50% of the work at his software vendor. Other companies such as Shopify and Microsoft have urged employees to adopt the technology in their daily work. The CEO of Klarna said in May that the online lender has managed to shrink its headcount by about 40%, in part due to investments in AI and natural attrition in its workforce.
Jassy said on Monday that AI will free employees from “rote work” and “make all our jobs more interesting,” while enabling staffers to invent better services more quickly than before.
Amazon and other tech companies have also been shrinking their workforces through rolling layoffs over the past several years. Amazon has cut more than 27,000 jobs since the start of 2022, and it’s announced smaller, more targeted layoffs in its retail and devices units in recent months.
Amazon shares are flat so far this year, underperforming the Nasdaq, which has gained 5.5%. The stock is about 10% below its record reached in February, while fellow megacaps Meta, Microsoft and Nvidia are all trading at or very near record highs.
WATCH: Jassy says robots that will eventually do delivery and transportation
Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., during the Meta Connect event on Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Meta shares hit a record high on Monday, underscoring investor interest in the company’s new AI superintelligence group.
The company’s shares reached $747.90 during midday trading, topping Meta’s previous stock market record in February when it began laying off the 5% of its workforce that it deemed “low performers.”
Meta joins Microsoft and Nvidia among tech megacaps that have reached new highs of late, all closing at records Monday. Apple, Amazon, Alphabet and Tesla remain below their all-time highs reached late last year or early this year.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been on an AI hiring blitz amid fierce competition with rivals such as OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet. Earlier in June, Meta said it would hire Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang and some of his colleagues as part of a $14.3 billion investment into the executive’s data labeling and annotation startup.
The social media company also hired Nat Friedman and his business partner, Daniel Gross, the chief of Safe Superintelligence, an AI startup with a valuation of $32 billion, CNBC reported on June 19. Meta’s attempts to buy Safe Superintelligence were rebuffed by the startup’s founder and AI expert Ilya Sutskever, the report noted.
Wang and Friedman are the leaders of Meta’s new Superintelligence Labs, tasked with overseeing the company’s artificial intelligence foundation models, projects and research, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC. The term superintelligence refers to technology that exceeds human capability.
Bloomberg News first reported about the new superintelligence unit.
Meta has also snatched AI researchers from OpenAI. Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, said during a podcast that Meta was offering signing bonuses as high as $100 million.
Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s technology chief, spoke about the social media company’s AI hiring spree during a June 20 interview with CNBC’s “Closing Bell Overtime,” saying that the talent market is “really incredible and kind of unprecedented in my 20-year career as a technology executive.”
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