Google: Trimming Expenses Signals an Abstemious Tremor
May 12, 2020
Times are changing at the Google. Despite being the world’s best and biggest online advertising service, the company is slowly morphing into an MBA centric operation.
CNBC published “Google Tells Employees They Can’t Expense Food or Other Perks When Working from Home.” The write up states:
The company issued an updated policy in the last week that states employees cannot expense perks while working from home, including food, fitness, home office furniture, decoration or gifts… The policy also states that employees cannot use unused budgets to do things like purchase meals for themselves or their teams during virtual meetings or donate to charities of their choice.
What’s interesting is that I saw Googlers living in their vehicles on or near Google properties in Mountain View. These individuals either chose van life to avoid the pre-Covid commute or because they could not afford a house or apartment.
Since these people live in some cases on Google premises, the change in perk policy may be particularly interesting. For Googlers who relied on the company for food face other hurdles. Nuking burritos in a microwave can get old fast.
What other financial tweaks will be forthcoming as the online ad giant tries to deal with the impact of the natural force of Covid and the unnatural force of the Bezos bulldozer scraping product search and advertising dollars from underneath Googzilla’s paws?
Stephen E Arnold, May 12, 2020
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