Google’s return-to-office crackdown gets backlash from some employees: ‘Check my work, not my badge’
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.
WATCH: War on remote work
Chief executive officer of Google Sundar Pichai.
Marek Antoni Iwanczuk | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
Google on Friday made the latest a splash in the AI talent wars, announcing an agreement to bring in Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence coding startup Windsurf.
As part of the deal, Google will also hire other senior Windsurf research and development employees. Google is not investing in Windsurf, but the search giant will take a nonexclusive license to certain Windsurf technology, according to a person familiar with the matter. Windsurf remains free to license its technology to others.
“We’re excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf’s team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding,” a Google spokesperson wrote in an email. “We’re excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere.”
The deal between Google and Windsurf comes after the AI coding startup had been in talks with OpenAI for a $3 billion acquisition deal, CNBC reported in April. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The move ratchets up the talent war in AI particularly among prominent companies. Meta has made lucrative job offers to several employees at OpenAI in recent weeks. Most notably, the Facebook parent added Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead its AI strategy as part of a $14.3 billion investment into his startup.
Douglas Chen, another Windsurf co-founder, will be among those joining Google in the deal, Jeff Wang, the startup’s new interim CEO and its head of business for the past two years, wrote in a post on X.
“Most of Windsurf’s world-class team will continue to build the Windsurf product with the goal of maximizing its impact in the enterprise,” Wang wrote.
Windsurf has become more popular this year as an option for so-called vibe coding, which is the process of using new age AI tools to write code. Developers and non-developers have embraced the concept, leading to more revenue for Windsurf and competitors, such as Cursor, which OpenAI also looked at buying. All the interest has led investors to assign higher valuations to the startups.
This isn’t the first time Google has hired select people out of a startup. It did the same with Character.AI last summer. Amazon and Microsoft have also absorbed AI talent in this fashion, with the Adept and Inflection deals, respectively.
Microsoft is pushing an agent mode in its Visual Studio Code editor for vibe coding. In April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said AI is composing as much of 30% of his company’s code.
The Verge reported the Google-Windsurf deal earlier on Friday.
Technology
Nvidia’s Jensen Huang sells more than $36 million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, holds a motherboard as he speaks during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, on June 11, 2025.
Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unloaded roughly $36.4 million worth of stock in the leading artificial intelligence chipmaker, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
The sale, which totals 225,000 shares, comes as part of Huang’s previously adopted plan in March to unload up to 6 million shares of Nvidia through the end of the year. He sold his first batch of stock from the agreement in June, equaling about $15 million.
Last year, the tech executive sold about $700 million worth of shares as part of a prearranged plan. Nvidia stock climbed about 1% Friday.
Huang’s net worth has skyrocketed as investors bet on Nvidia’s AI dominance and graphics processing units powering large language models.
The 62-year-old’s wealth has grown by more than a quarter, or about $29 billion, since the start of 2025 alone, based on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. His net worth last stood at $143 billion in the index, putting him neck-and-neck with Berkshire Hathaway‘s Warren Buffett at $144 billion.
Shortly after the market opened Friday, Fortune‘s analysis of net worth had Huang ahead of Buffett, with the Nvidia CEO at $143.7 billion and the Oracle of Omaha at $142.1 billion.
The company has also achieved its own notable milestones this year, as it prospers off the AI boom.
On Wednesday, the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker became the first company to top a $4 trillion market capitalization, beating out both Microsoft and Apple. The chipmaker closed above that milestone Thursday as CNBC reported that the technology titan met with President Donald Trump.
Brooke Seawell, venture partner at New Enterprise Associates, sold about $24 million worth of Nvidia shares, according to an SEC filing. Seawell has been on the company’s board since 1997, according to the company.
Huang still holds more than 858 million shares of Nvidia, both directly and indirectly, in different partnerships and trusts.
WATCH: Nvidia hits $4 trillion in market cap milestone despite curbs on chip exports
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Sports2 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike