Remote work is a dwindling option at Google (GOOGL), as the company further tightens its return-to-work policy. The company has reportedly told some remote employees that they need to start showing up in the office at least three days a week if they want to avoid being part of broader cost-cutting at the company.
According to internal documents obtained by CNBC, remote employees in several Google departments — including the company’s Technical Services and People Operations — were told they needed to return to their nearest office on a hybrid schedule.
Per an internal memo, employees in the technical services operation were told that they must either adopt a hybrid office schedule or take a voluntary exit package; they were reportedly offered a one-time relocation expense to move within 50 miles of an office. Meanwhile, the message for the human resources employees was even starker: Failure to return to the office — reportedly by June — on a hybrid basis would result in their roles being eliminated altogether.
Google spokesperson Courtenay Mencini said in a statement to CNBC (CMCSA) that the decisions about return-to-work policies are based on individual teams and aren’t part of a companywide policy.
“As we’ve said before, in-person collaboration is an important part of how we innovate and solve complex problems,” Mencini said. “To support this, some teams have asked remote employees that live near an office to return to in-person work three days a week.”
This shift away from remote work is part of a larger trend in Silicon Valley, where companies are increasingly moving away from the flexible, remote-work schedules they offered during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
While Google has been gradually nudging employees back to the office, this latest move amounts to a crack down on workers dodging the hybrid-schedule mandates.
This return-to-office mandate doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s part of a larger wave that seems to be sweeping through Google. Earlier this year, the company began offering voluntary exit packages to U.S.-based employees in its People Operations division, following a memo from chief people officer Fiona Cicconi in February.
That offer came on the heels of a similar program announced in January where the company offered voluntary exit packages for full-time employees in the U.S. for workers in Google’s Platforms and Devices group, which oversees products such as Android, Chrome, Fitbit, and Nest. That unit has seen cuts across nearly two dozen teams. While internal correspondence indicated that remote work was a factor in the layoffs, Google spokesperson Mencini told CNBC that it wasn’t a major consideration for the changes.
A year ago, Google combined its Android unit with its hardware group under the leadership of Rick Osterloh, a senior vice president, who said in January that the voluntary exit plan may be a fit for employees who struggle with Google’s hybrid work expectations.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who returned to help lead Google’s AI push, has made it clear that the bar is rising. In a February memo to AI teams, Brin encouraged employees to return to the office “at least” every weekday, claiming “60 hours a week is the sweet spot of productivity” if the company wants to stay ahead in the increasingly competitive space.
Still, Google’s shift away from remote work has been met with resistance — especially from employees who relocated during the pandemic or who have come to appreciate the benefits of a work-from-home lifestyle. Plus, some experts say return-to-office mandates in tech amount to “soft layoffs,” or excuses for companies to reduce their workforces while mitigating the negative headlines and costs associated with conventional layoffs.
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